The High-Impact 10X Advantage; Share of Voice vs. Share of Mind
What if you broadcast a flaming, un-ignorable ad that hits people between the eyes?
Why Making the Ads Is the Last Thing We Do
This substantive style of advertising (started by Ally & Gargano and continued by Scali, McCabe, Sloves) tripled US sales of Volvos.
Substance Over Style
Every ad has style and substance, cheese and meat. Most ads are cheese because ad writers are rarely given meat. Style cheese includes layout, angle, tone of voice and hyperbole. Substance meat is provable fact and concrete detail.
Images, “Truthiness,” and Forced Participation
Recent psychological studies show that statements accompanied by related images are considered more believable than the same statement without an image.
Showmanship & Transparency
Like most buzzwords “transparency” is most misunderstood by the very people mouthing it most often. The proper way requires transparency AND showmanship.
Building Tribes Takes Whisk(e)y
Building a tribe takes longer than Ricky’s stints in jail. You gotta be patient, and commit to the content for a long time. Way longer than you think it’s funny for.
Wizard’s Roundtable: Episode 2
The four things that need to be in every commercial, no matter what's going on in the world. And whether or not this is the time to renegotiate your media buy.
Parasocial Influence
You have at least one late night host that you probably feel as if you “know,” even if you’ve never met them. And it’s not just you; it’s all of us — we all have this one-sided relationship with at least some celebrities.
Growing Your Following (Business) In a Crisis
James Dean isn’t a dead 60’s movie star or a country singin’ sausage maker. He’s a hippy children’s author whose following is growing like crazy right now.
The Most Interesting 2001 Kia Spectra In The World
If you’re going to keep posting forgettable ads and product descriptions then you must accept that you are boring and irrelevant. There, I said it. Somebody needed to. It comes from a place of love.
Bingeing Boredom, Netflix Neverland, and Social Scrolling
People are researching because they have time and are bored. Fulfill their curiosity and desire to be transformed in the future.
10 Marketing Lessons From Garth Brooks
Even though he couldn’t possibly interact with everyone, he specifically circled the round stage and made eye contact with someone at each point before he moved on.
C. F. Hathaway’s Formula for Maximizing a Small Ad Budget
David Ogilvy’s “The Man in the Hathaway Shirt” ushered in a new era of storytelling in advertising. The story, however, took place entirely in your imagination.
The Truth About “Creativity” In Advertising
In stark contrast to the notion of a “spoonful” of entertainment, most ads from highly successful branding campaigns are two-thirds to ninety percent entertainment.