Dear Reader,

Do you have the Tools, the Touch, or Both?

I’ve seen a lot of people who know the tools.

They’ve studied the greats. They can name-drop Ogilvy and Caples and Schwartz.

They know the rules.

But their copy still feels flat.

Why?

Because knowing the science isn’t the same as having the touch.

The touch is art. Art is the soul.

The tools come from science. Science defines the rules.

You have art and science inside of you.

The left side of your brain wants structure and sequence. (Science)

The right side feels rhythm, emotion, pattern. (Art)

Good copywriters know how to use both.

The best copywriters don’t have to think about using both, they just do it.

Their skill has evolved to an unconscious mastery.

They say what needs to be said — they make you feel what needs to be felt.

In this episode, Roy and I talk about the art and science of copywriting. We discuss structure and how it creates freedom, why some writers succeed with formulas while others run on instinct, and how real creativity happens when the two collide.

By the end of this episode, you’ll walk away with a deeper understanding of the copywriter’s mind. And if you have ever considered hiring a copywriter, this episode will give you valuable insights before you make your selection.

Enjoy.

 

Watch / listen above or read below

Todd Liles: Welcome to episode number 21, The Science and the Art of Copywriting. Today, we’re gonna explore the distinctions between the two. I’ve heard Roy put it that the art is intuitive and the science is formulaic. Let’s unpack that and explore that so that for those of you that are trying to better understand your branding and your marketing, or for those that are actually trying to become better at it, you’re going to have some new resources and some new tools.

And you’re going to be able to apply both in your business and your work. Let me show you where the source of today is coming from. In addition to the many Monday Morning Memos Roy has written, there is a hidden gem that’s on his website.

It is The Stuff Roy Said. It is a collection of interesting and creative and random thoughts sometimes, but not unintentional thoughts that may pop up. I find it very insightful. Here’s one of them. “When it is done by formula, we call it science. And when it is done by intuition, we call it art.” That one quote has inspired this entire conversation.

In discussion point number one, we are gonna talk about defining art versus science in copywriting. Because science is a system. It is formula. It is structure. It is patterns that we can produce with replicability, the scientific equation, if you will. While art is feel, it is tone, it is rhythm, and it is a wordplay that creates an emotional response. 

We’re gonna explore both of these areas. Today we’re gonna dive into what makes good copywriting powerful. Specifically, when it’s done by intuition, we call that art. But when it’s done by science, we call that formula. You put this to practice. I really wanna unpack this for the listener today and understand why you know this, how you discovered it, what inspired it, and how you use it.

Roy Williams: Okay. I think that every artist, and remember, I have a very, very, very broad definition for the arts. Poetry is an art. Music is an art. Photography is an art. Painting and sculpture, of course, are arts. Dance is an art. Swordplay is an art. Well, so are graphics, and so is screenwriting and writing novels and writing ads.

Now, are there laws? Are there certain formulas? Are there certain structures that are reliable? Yes. But can you get where you need to go? Can you accomplish what you need to accomplish with only the science? Absolutely not. Now, here’s why. In 1981, Dr. Roger Sperry won the Nobel Prize in physiology for his documentation of brain lateralization. Dr. Roger Sperry. Now, what he basically said was, and he said it almost in these words, that we don’t have one brain divided into two halves as much as we have two separate competing brains.

And so the rational, logical, sequential, deductive reasoning brain is the left hemisphere. It seeks to forecast a result. It seeks to forecast a result. Okay? Now, direct marketers: tell me to take this action, and I’ll get this return. Spend this money, and here’s what I’ll get in return for spending that money. Anytime you’re looking at something as a rule or a formula, you’re looking at it from the left hemisphere of your brain because it always hungers to forecast a result.

And the left hemisphere of the brain understands the difference between truth and fiction. It understands the difference between wisdom and foolishness, or at least it thinks it does. That’s what it’s always trying to forecast. Now, fully half of your brain, half of your brain. Now, keep in mind that half of the brain exists whether we’re created in the image of God or whether we evolved from pond slime over billions of years. Okay, so regardless of what you believe about the origin of the species.

Todd Liles: It’s still there.

Roy Williams: It’s still there. We have a brain, two competing brains. And so we have to live with that. And so it’s there for a reason. That’s my point, Todd. It’s there for a reason. So the right hemisphere of the brain doesn’t know fact from fiction. It doesn’t care true from false. It just doesn’t care. That’s the left brain’s job. So it doesn’t know true from false, but it recognizes patterns. So music: pitch, key, tempo, musical interval, musical rhythm, and musical tempo, rhythm, contour. Anyway, there’s six sub-languages.

The right brain recognizes patterns of activities and patterns of outcomes. And we call it intuition. So what we think of as logic is left hemisphere. But intuition, gut feelings, hunches, that’s the logic of the right hemisphere. And it’s all based upon having seen this pattern before.

Now remember, there are no words in the right hemisphere of the brain. The rational, logical, sequential, deductive reasoning left hemisphere is where all language is. Wernicke’s area and Broca’s area and the arcuate fasciculus that ties them together is all left hemisphere. And so in the wordless, it uses symbols, it uses metaphors, it uses similes, and it recognizes parallel structure. It recognizes paired opposites.

Paired opposites, very powerful as these opposing forces like protons and electrons in the right hemisphere of the brain. Now stay with me. 1981, Roger Sperry documents this, wins the Nobel Prize. Revolutionizes cognitive neuroscience all around the world. Okay? Rational, logical, sequential, deductive reasoning half of the brain is the left. And this absolutely abstract, symbolic, doesn’t know fact from fiction… We can only enjoy movies, you mentioned in a previous episode having seen the new Superman movie. If you only had a left brain, you wouldn’t have seen it because it’s not true.

Todd Liles: Right.

Roy Williams: Fantasy, adventure, reading fiction books and watching television shows and enjoying the characters in TV shows. You know they’re actors. The characters they’re playing don’t exist. This is all imaginary. Okay? It’s the right hemisphere of the brain that makes you respond to that.

Todd Liles: Exactly.

Roy Williams: Now stay with me. Silvano Arieti died many years ago. He wrote a book called The Magic Synthesis. And this is what he said. Now check this out, Todd. We’re talking about products and we’re talking about processes. You with me? Stay with me. Products and processes. Creative products are always shiny and new. The creative process is ancient and unchanging. Creative products are always shiny and new. The creative process is ancient and unchanging.

And you’re going, “Okay, was this guy a philosopher?” No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Stay with me. He wasn’t a philosopher. Arieti believed that perception is not just binary. Now remember, he wrote this book before Dr. Roger Sperry did his work, and he was talking about the binary brain, the fact that there’s two sides and they interpret things totally differently. He already understood that.

Todd Liles: He knew it.

Roy Williams: So Arieti believed that perception is not just binary with logic on the left side and pattern recognition on the right. He believed that our minds can blend rational with irrational. Our minds can blend sophisticated with primitive. Our minds can blend the conscious and the subconscious to create a third type of perception, not just rational versus intuitive, right? To create a third type of perception known as creativity. Creativity was the third state.

And so now check this out. Psychology Today magazine. Psychology Today magazine begins their praise of Arieti, Dr. Arieti, with this paragraph: “Silvano Arieti’s book Interpretation of Schizophrenia was awarded the 1975 US National Book Award in the science category. More than 40 years later, it remains the most significant contribution to the psychological understanding of schizophrenia since Kraepelin and Bleuler.”

Two important scientists. “Contemporary psychiatrists and psychotherapists would be wise to review Arieti’s vast contributions to this field.” Arieti was the guy. Dr. Arieti. He was a psychiatrist and he was heralded worldwide as the guy that figured out schizophrenia. Stay with me. It gets weird. You ready?

Todd Liles: I’m ready.

Roy Williams: Silvano Arieti was born in 1914. When he died in 1981, Arieti was perhaps the world’s foremost authority on schizophrenia. He wrote the award-winning book about it. The other book he wrote was about creativity. Now, coincidence? Coincidence? Maybe. But I’m convinced that creativity is a mild form of schizophrenia. It’s a split personality disorder.

And so you have to have this rational, logical, sequential, deductive reasoning science. You have to have that. But you also have to have the music, the poetry, the symbolism, the parallel structures, the rhythms, and you have to get all this artistic stuff. And you don’t choose between them. You do both of them simultaneously. Creativity is a wild and spontaneous act employed by artists, thinkers, poets, dancers, musicians, and philosophers.

It is that conflicted insanity that we’re after. It’s known as creativity. And he said, “It’s a marvelous blend of rational with irrational, sophisticated with primitive, conscious with subconscious.” And so you don’t have to choose. And no, you can’t be good at ad writing if you only use intuition or if you only use science. All creativity, all creativity is a moment of the two opposite sides of your brain, the two opposite sides of your mind coming together and working in harmony. That’s called creativity.

And I’m going, people who believe that everything is scientific are cheating themselves out of access to one half of their brain. You have to dance, you have to sing, you have to cry. You have to understand all of these emotions and all of these irrational things to be human.

Todd Liles: Yes.

Roy Williams: And I’m just going, I love Arieti for that. I’m going, this guy was a psychiatrist, the world’s foremost authority on schizophrenia. He never said creativity is mild schizophrenia. But I read both books and I’m going, I said, creativity is mild schizophrenia. You have this weird split personality disorder and you’re taking these two rational, logical and irrational, illogical halves of your brain and putting them together and using both of them simultaneously. And if people get that, you can have so stinking much fun.

Todd Liles: Well, obviously, there’s a lot to unpack there. And what I wanna do is relate. So since we’re talking about art versus science and copywriting, and you’ve sort of brought it full circle as you’ve talked about the left and the right side of the hemisphere, one of the ways to create sort of a mental box for science in my approach is you can begin to think about it like formulas and structures, especially in the world of writing radio ads.

You’ve got 30 seconds, you’ve got 45 seconds, you’ve got 60 seconds. In essence, you have a frame, no different than if someone was going to paint a picture. They’ve got a canvas. It is of a certain size. That’s it. A lot of times people will say that those things are actually things that reduce creativity, but from my experience, the boundaries enhance creativity.

Roy Williams: The typical term among artists is creative handcuffs.

Todd Liles: There you go.

Roy Williams: Yeah.

Todd Liles: But there’s also a certain amount of freedom in understanding what rules you have to play by. I don’t wanna use the word limitations, but I do want to say rules are rules. There’s only so much canvas, there’s only so much time. Let’s paint a picture. So in my mind, when we talk about the science side of it, we go, okay, there’s that.

There’s another technique that I forget the term, forgive me, you’ll fill it in for me instantly, but there’s a technique that I’ve seen you do when you are creating. You have this set of world rules. You talked about it in previous episodes where it’s world building, but it even goes beyond that. It goes into copy. You have segments that you write that sort of hold independently of each other. Each one serves a function.

And you can take a 60-second and get it to a 45 or a 30 by knowing how to play in those rules. So I find myself going, wow, that’s amazingly powerful. That’s sort of the science and the structure side of it. But then when you come over here and go, the art side of it, turning a banana into a phone wherever it may be, but nobody… Everyone just sees it’s a phone, it’s not a banana, right? That’s what you do with Scudamore.

There are many different artistic things that you do. Having the gentlemen and ladies of Morris Jenkins sing “Gently, Gently,” even though it’s based off an old tune, the idea of going, well, I’m gonna put this here. So you’ve unpacked so much. Instead of asking questions, I’m gonna share with you what I think and then we’ll move to the next section.

Roy Williams: Cool.

Todd Liles: I think that some copywriters resist structure and they do it at their detriment.

Roy Williams: Absolutely.

Todd Liles: I think structure is a good thing.

Roy Williams: Absolutely.

Todd Liles: The creative boundaries are a good thing.

Roy Williams: What you’re talking about earlier is what I call modules.

Todd Liles: Modules. There it is.

Roy Williams: And so think of it as just little LEGO blocks. And so all the little LEGO blocks are about the same size, they’re different colors, but they all fit together. And I can fit any LEGO blocks with any other LEGO blocks. So I always write the 60-second ad first and then I create the 30 from the 60 and then I create the 15 from the 60.

Todd Liles: Thank you.

Roy Williams: Now, why do I not create the 15 from the 30? Because with 30 seconds, I can choose this part of the 60 and make an ad out of it. But does that mean that if I’m limited to only 15 seconds, it’s gonna be within the 30? Not necessarily. It might be a whole different part of the 60 that I use for the 15. And so what happens, you always write the 60 first, and then in a matter of a minute, I can have a 30, and another minute, I can have the 15 because all of the modules or all the LEGO blocks are built. And I just got through building these LEGO blocks, and I can go take this one, this one, this one out, boom, that’s the 30. Take this one, this one, this one out, and that’s the 15. Now we’re done.

Todd Liles: I love it. So I think you’ve done a beyond good job here. And I love bringing these two things together to come up with the term creativity. And that actually makes perfect sense to me. I’ve mentioned to you before that I’ve taken many, many different tests as a child recognized as having certain gifts. They wanted to know, was it right brain, was it left brain?

And I’m one of those weird guys that I typically fall dead in the middle, which can create weird conflicts for me. But when I get into a groove, the absolute best groove is one where I have structure and I have freedom. I have that dichotomy. Let’s talk about if you need to be both great at science and the art of copywriting. Is it possible that you could be an amazing copywriter, an amazing brander, an amazing marketer, and really only be good at one?

Let’s find out. So we’re gonna move on to a question that I have written here, and specifically it’s do you need both to be great? But I’m gonna rephrase it, and I’m gonna say, do you need to be great at both to be good? Because I think it’s a slightly different approach, right? We clearly need to have both. But now the question becomes if someone… And it’s almost like a ChatGPT thing. ChatGPT has an ability to duplicate and organize and do many things, right?

And if we loaded it with every single one of your writings, thoughts, and ads, it could put something out Roy-esque, but it’s not gonna be you. And just as a side note, I’ve actually gone into rabbit holes with it where I’ve asked it questions about science and about art and about creativity. And I really encourage any of the listener to do this.

It will not take you very long to have ChatGPT tell you that it ultimately cannot do real art. And it says in its own words that it can’t do it because it misses the human experience and the soul that forms creativity. Now, I tell you, Roy, I did not think that the device would have said that because I figured that would have been bad for business, but it did. So this is where I’m coming to here.

I think some copywriters need to embrace the science more. They need to be more structured, they need to follow the details, and yet they don’t need to stifle their creativity. So here’s the ultimate question. Can someone succeed long-term if they are only really exceptional at one? They’re terrible at the structure, but they’re so amazingly creative. It’s like they invented a new song. They did what the Beatles did, they broke the mold, and now people are gonna study them for the structure.

Roy Williams: No. I’m with you. I’m with you. That happens. Let me put it this way. The person who I know really well who was way more science than art was John Young. John Young that wrote the frustrated contractor’s letter that launched the whole Abrams and Young adventure, right, all those years ago. And I mean, those guys are continued to be legends to this day. John told me he’s read every book ever written in the history of the world in advertising. And he hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates, hates writing, but he’s really, really good at it because he approaches it from a very scientific method, and he’s very committed and very disciplined. But you know what his degree is in?

Todd Liles: Nuclear physicist.

Roy Williams: He’s a nuclear physicist. And so when you have the brain of an engineer, specifically a nuclear physicist, and you decide that you want to learn advertising, you learn it scientifically. And he never took joy in it, and he thought it was agony, but he was incredibly good at it, purely as a scientist. But it took an enormous amount of study to remember what he learned. And he read books written back in the 1920s and 1930s, I mean, by the early, early guys, all the way up to the most modern guys.

Todd Liles: He’s a huge Robert Collier fan.

Roy Williams: Exactly. And what I’m saying is, I’ve always liked John Young. We’ve always been close. Whereas on the other hand, I have at least three partners that immediately come to mind that are just intuitive geniuses. Now, the reason why a person who’s gigantically right-brain dominant has a pretty good chance of being a good ad writer is because, remember, the pattern recognition is subconscious. It’s not logic.

But the ads that they know are great and the ads that really move them, without being able to explain it, they recognize a pattern and they can duplicate the pattern. And so they understand the science through observation, not through logic. And so you can absorb culture, and you can absorb great ads, you can absorb great music and reproduce it without understanding what it is you’re doing. You understood the structure, you understood… Not in a way that you can describe.

Todd Liles: There you go.

Roy Williams: Not in a way that you can describe, but at an unconscious level, you get it and you can reproduce it.

Todd Liles: There’s a pattern recognition which is something that I do very naturally. And there was something that was occurring that I had noticed, and I’ve noticed it for a couple of weeks, and I didn’t know how to put words to it. I won’t go into detail here, but I was pointing this out and I’m like, “Do you see this? Do you see this?” But what I didn’t know how to say is what I thought I was seeing. It was a feeling.

And sometimes it’s hard for people to express their feelings because, again, the part of the mind that knows it has no words. And then it all comes to light and I’m like, “Of course.” This is what I’ve been bringing everyone’s attention. I can point to the specifics. I could tell you how I felt and my feelings were dead accurate, but I couldn’t put into words why I felt that way.

Roy Williams: And so in those moments…

Todd Liles: That’s sort of… That’s intuition.

Roy Williams: Yeah, but, well, what happens is when you have the intuition and then the thing comes to pass, a lot of people call that a premonition, which is whenever it’s just a very, very accurate intuition. When the intuition that you know what’s gonna happen but you don’t know how you know that, the pattern recognition side of your brain, when it’s highly developed, you can go… You can sense the pattern and you can know what happens next. When this pattern is in motion, you know what happens next and you’re forecasting this thing that’s gonna happen, and it seems like magic. No. It’s a very active, fully one-half of your brain does this at a level that you’re not fully conscious of. And so gut feelings, hunches, intuition, that’s real.

Todd Liles: Yeah, you learn to listen to ’em.

Roy Williams: It isn’t magic. That’s not fantasy. It is half of your brain, and it is the illogical half that is tracking and measuring and categorizing. And did you know… I’ll wrap it up with this or I’ll get carried away ’cause it’s one of my favorite subjects. When you’re sleeping… This isn’t strictly true, but it’s directionally accurate, okay?

Todd Liles: I love that sentence.

Roy Williams: It’s directionally accurate. The left half of your brain, which contains what’s called the visuospatial sketchpad, sometimes called the visuospatial notepad. What we call that is the mind’s eye. So the mind’s eye, where you’re imagining something and you’re actually seeing it in your mind and you’re conjuring it in your imagination, that’s part of the left hemisphere, the rational, logical, deductive reasoning left hemisphere. It goes away when you go to sleep, and it shows up on the right hemisphere of the brain as dreams.

And so dreams are the visuospatial sketchpad. It’s a movie screen with nothing on it. And so here’s what happens. So the left side of your brain kind of goes to sleep at night, but the right hemisphere goes into very rhythmic activity. The right hemisphere of the brain is awake all night long.

And all of your unresolved gut feelings, hunches, instincts, observations, conflicted thoughts are all processed symbolically, and that shows up as dreams. You dream every night. You just don’t always remember what you dreamed, but every night, everybody dreams. And it’s the right hemisphere of the brain trying to make sense of the day. Trying to make sense of the day. So sometimes you wake up, you know something, you don’t know how you know it. No, no, no, no, no. Half of your brain has been figuring it out from all these things you’ve been seeing and kind of noticing, and your left brain can’t put it together, but your right brain, while you’re asleep, puts it together. And then whenever it happens, you go, “How did I know that was gonna happen?”

Todd Liles: So in our world over at the Wizard of Ads, when a client comes on, there’s usually three positions. I’m not gonna say three people, but there’s usually at least three positions. We have a media buyer, we have a copywriter, and we have a lead strategist. There are times when the strategist and the copywriter may be the same, usually reserved for when a client is smaller, and that’s the way we gotta build the team. Not always, but in observing, it leads me to wonder… And I know there’s no such thing as a set-in-stone, this is the way it is, but it leads me to wonder if in our world, if the copywriter is serving the role as the artist and the strategist is serving the role as the scientist.

Roy Williams: Logician. Yeah.

Todd Liles: Yeah.

Roy Williams: No, the strategist, I think it’s fair to call the strategist the logician because they do have to figure out, what do I think is the highest and best use of the assets of this client? Now, the highest and best use of the assets, let’s talk about some of those are financial assets called the ad budget. What’s the highest and best way to spend that? Highest and best use. Now, here’s what happens. Would it work if I did this? Would it work if…? Yes, everything would work. There’s nothing that doesn’t work.

And so when people say, “Would it work if…?” I’m going, “Yes, but that’s never the issue.” What is the highest and best use of this budget in this situation? And then the non-cash assets, the non-financial assets, are the ones I treasure the most. What unleveraged stories, relationships, beliefs, convictions?

What unleveraged story elements have you got that nobody’s ever noticed before, nobody’s ever talked about before? And when I go probing for those, you know the thing I do, it’s legendary. I do all of this logical work before lunch, and then I have about a three-and-a-half-hour lunch someplace really nice, and they just keep bringing food and wine.

Todd Liles: I love it.

Roy Williams: And it’s during the three-and-a-half-hour lunch when everybody thinks we’re just relaxing, that’s when I’m getting all the stuff I need. Because now everybody’s unguarded and they’re speaking from their heart, and they’re talking about family, and they’re talking about dreams and schemes and hopes and past wounds and disappointments and all these things. And now I’m going, “Okay, now for the first time, I actually understand who I’m working with.”

And so people think I just like to eat big lunches and spend enormous amounts of money doing it. Nope. That is when the real work gets done for me. Because I need to know things they wouldn’t tell me in a structured environment around a conference table. You get enough food on the table and you get enough people telling stories and everybody laughing, and when everybody’s laughing, people blurt things out they would not normally have said. And that’s when you find the gold.

Todd Liles: Now let’s dive in from Roy’s perspective himself on what he actually does. As an observer of his work, what I find is that Roy has the perfect balance. He is artistic as well as scientific. Let’s see if he agrees with me. Roy, you’re describing your approach. You’ve just shared with us how you gather information from folks in that meeting and how you continue to do that. You’re looking for the insights, and I love that.

I’ve also heard legendary conversations about Robe Roy, the man that gets up at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, puts on his robe, makes his Earl Grey tea, and just goes to creativity town. You are literally working from 3:00 to 9:00, and then 9:00 you’ll have your one-days, you’ll move into other things. I mean, you’re getting two days’ worth of work in. In case people are curious, they may not know that about you. They sometimes think that creative types don’t work.

Roy Williams: But I’m in bed every night at 7 o’clock.

Todd Liles: Yeah, you’re in bed at 7:00, but you’re working till 6:30.

Roy Williams: Yeah, true. That’s true. Yeah.

Todd Liles: I’ve been with you past 7:00, so I know it’s not always 7:00. Your writing process, just the writing process. What are some things you haven’t told us yet? And I’m curious what… I imagine you sitting in front of your computer in a dark room with a cup of Earl Grey tea. I don’t know. What does the writing process look like for you?

Roy Williams: Okay, let’s talk about today.

Todd Liles: Okay.

Roy Williams: Okay, so today’s Monday. Now, last Friday at the lunch you didn’t show up at because you had important business to do…

Todd Liles: Hey, I’m working on our next big adventure.

Roy Williams: I’m proud that one of us is working hard and it’s not me. So I’m at lunch with a bunch of old men, right? And whenever you can come, you always are welcome and everybody loves to see you come. And it was actually Ian Rogers began a sentence. My friend and I and this other guy. No, it was this other guy, my friend and I and this other guy. And I just laughed and he said, what’s funny? And I said, I just love that line. My friend and I and this other guy.

And then Brad Whittington said, you’re gonna open an ad with that, aren’t you? And I said, it’s a great opening line. I said, you can go anywhere with that. My friend and I and this other guy. And so I got up this morning and I decided I’m not gonna start an ad with it. I started writing a book and this morning I got up about 2:30 and I started writing a book.

And the opening line is my friend and I and this other guy. And I’m seven chapters into it now. And so what I did is first I’m sitting at my desk in my office and then I go into the TV room and this kind of a weird recliner, it’s an anti-gravity chair. And worked on my lap till I got tired of sitting there and then went to the kitchen table and made some tea and sat there at the table and worked there. And then I made another cup of tea and went onto the back porch and turned the water fountains and the spouts and everything in the swimming pool for all the water noise that happens, hit that little button on the way out the door.

Todd Liles: So you’re finding new ways of stimulation through.

Roy Williams: Yeah, so what I’m saying, so I’ll spend an hour and a half here and then go sit over here for an hour and a half, then go outside and sit on the back porch for an hour and a half and then just wander around. And then whenever I get tired of it, I put it down, go do something else. And so a thing that I heard on Friday, had no idea, no plan to write a book, seven chapters into that sucker with a bunch of the illustrations already figured out and probably should have it done in another 45 days.

Todd Liles: That’s neat. You know where you’re at right now? I was at that spot in a place in time when I was writing two blogs a week for the Service Excellence website and before I relaunched toddliles.com, it was a blog and I was writing two blogs a week there. I’d hear something that inspired me, we might go write. As our business grew and it required more of my logical thinking, those moments of spontaneity, because my old blogs were extremely creative. You can read them like, oh, there’s creativity there.

My new content, and I’m producing an equal amount of abundance, but it’s not outwardly facing, it’s inwardly facing with clients and with team members. I still chase those moments of creativity, but they’re so substantially different now. And kudos for you for never losing that.

But I suppose this is just a question of your own art and approach. I know I could get it back. And even like writing these don’t for me have the same feeling of creation that writing blogs felt like six years ago. I still feel like these are really important, but these are more structured, they’re more scientific, they’re more with a purpose, they’re more with a goal.

Roy Williams: What do you think changed?

Todd Liles: What I think changed was a couple things. I grew as a human into new shoes. And it’s naturally who I am at this point. And again, right-brain, left-brain. And at this particular moment, what the company needs is it needs the left Todd. And the side of that that’s negative though, is that the right side or the creative side is what grew us. Right. But I would love to get it back.

But I also think an abundance of time. I don’t know how long it takes you to write a Monday Morning Memo, but when I was doing those writing sessions, it would be four to five hours for every blog, for 350 at most to 700 words. And I know that this stuff is powerful because I wrote a parable in the form of Aesop, The Negative Little Ant. And I was visiting with someone two weeks ago.

Roy Williams: Who remembers it.

Todd Liles: Yeah, they quoted me on it.

Roy Williams: Oh yeah. Yeah.

Todd Liles: Yeah, they quoted me on it. And I’m like, I wrote that. And they didn’t believe I wrote it. They’d printed it off the website so many years ago.

Roy Williams: Right.

Todd Liles: And took off the credentials. But they share it as internal document. And I’m like, no, no, I definitely wrote that. And I sent them the blog. And they’re like, he sent it back, you’re like, you wrote this? I’m like, yeah, it’s definitely me. I wrote that. I miss that creative side. Okay, that’s a long way of saying how do you not let that part of you evaporate? Is it just the consistency?

Roy Williams: Okay, short answer. There are certain areas of my life where I’m very, very highly disciplined and I’m very aware of where those, what those areas are. Business is not one of them. And I’m unbelievably self-indulgent in certain areas. I so much hate, I detest, I refuse to be a manager, I refuse to be a CEO, I refuse to be the person who’s responsible for balancing the checkbook. I have three people in my life that allow me to be self-indulgent like a nine-year-old child.

And it’s my younger son Jacob, who’s the president of Wizard of Ads and who does all the business of the business along with Corrine Taylor, my operations manager who’s been with me for 27 years, and my wife who’s been with me for 49 years. And between my wife, who’s an adult, and Corrine Taylor, who’s an adult, and my youngest son who’s an adult, I get to be nine years old.

And so I was blessed with those three things. You’ve got one, you’ve got a brilliant wife. You don’t have a Corrine Taylor or an adult son that you can turn the business over to. And so he actually does all the things… He’s brilliant at all the things I hate, and he likes doing it. And so that’s why.

Todd Liles: Oh, thank you. Last segment question here for you, Roy, is how can a listener, or even can they, spot great copywriting even if they’re not a writer themselves?

Roy Williams: Yes, they can spot it.

Todd Liles: How?

Roy Williams: Okay, I’m gonna make this broader than advertising. Because if I make it broader than advertising, okay, It’s gonna be easier for you to learn it.

Todd Liles: Okay.

Roy Williams: Anytime you have any experience, whether it’s a photograph you look at or a painting or a piece of music or stained glass in church or a line in a movie. On Friday, I mentioned that conversation just at… Ian Rogers started telling a story. He says, “Yeah, my friend and I and this other guy.” And I just said, “That’s such a great line.” I don’t know why. It just struck me, boom.

When something moves you, Todd, when something moves you, listeners, when something moves you, say, “Wow, let me ponder that for a minute.” You write it down, you capture it. Do you know the number of times that I’ll hit pause on the DVR, rewind it, and transcribe, keep rewinding it until I’ve got it transcribed perfectly? I do that constantly. I’ve got 8,000 and change of things that I’ve transcribed out of books, TV shows, movies, interviews.

And whenever I hear a phrase or a line or a sentence, like that deal from Silvano Arieti that we talked about, I just go, “That really moved me. That really moves me.” And then you ask yourself the question, “Why?” Listeners, viewers, when something moves you and you go, “Wow, that really hit me. Wow.” And what you’ll notice is you’ll notice first with movies and TV shows and music and art and jokes.

If a joke is just the funniest thing you’ve ever heard in your life and you just can’t get over it, ask yourself, “Okay, let me reverse engineer that. What was it about that? What was the structure of that joke? What were the exact words?” And you start going, “Okay, would it have worked?” And you did it in a previous episode whenever you said, “Instead of ‘don’t,’ can we change that to ‘won’t’?”

And I said, “Oh, yeah, definitely. I wish I’d have thought of that. It definitely should be ‘won’t’ instead of ‘don’t’.” And I’m going, so you spotted that and said, “Would it be better if I changed that line?” I said, “It would definitely be better.” I wasn’t humoring you. I’m going, “It would have been better.” Same thing. When you ask yourself, “Okay, this joke that was so funny, how does it go?” And you think about it and say, “What if this word was changed? What if this word was changed? It wouldn’t be as funny. Okay, why does this word matter more than this? Why is this word more effective than that word?” And you’ll just reverse engineer something. How did they do that to me? How did they do that to me? How did that hit me so hard? Why?

I need to figure out why that hit me so hard. And you will learn everything in the world you need to learn if you just wait for something just to hit you and really something just breaks your heart and you’re just crying. You’re going, “Okay, this is really tearing me up. Why is this tearing me up? What are the ingredients here that’s tearing me up?” And after a while, you know what you will have taught yourself? You will have taught yourself the science of communication. You will have taught yourself the structure of great storytelling. You will have taught yourself the structure of great ads.

And I’m going, anybody can do it. And I’ve just been doing it my entire life since I was in second grade. And so it’s second nature for me. I do it constantly. I can’t keep from doing it. And everybody goes, “Well, that’s just you.” Nope, it’s you, too. If nothing moves you, if nothing rings your bell, if nothing makes you laugh or breaks your heart or really impresses you,

Okay? Then, yeah, you’re just walking around to save funeral expenses. You know what I mean? And it’s like you’re dead. But I’m saying things move people. And when something moves you, ask yourself why and think about it and try to figure out why did that hit me so hard? And you always can, Todd. You always can. That’s my advice.

Todd Liles: Great. Thank you. The last thing we’re gonna do today is to see if you can recognize the good science and art when it’s in the wild, as in when it actually counts, when it’s in your business. We’ll give you some clues to look for so that when you’re out there in the real world, you’ll be prepared. All right, Roy, we are almost done. I don’t have an ad. I’ve got an examination of an ad. We have watched, I think maybe all the way back in episode one, the 1984 Apple ad.

Roy Williams: Right.

Todd Liles: What we’re going to do is look at something different. We’re going to watch a focus group of the ad. All right, Roy, that focus group was absolutely horrible at identifying the genius behind this classically powerful ad. Why?

Roy Williams: Okay, I’ll tell you why. It’s because whenever you ask a person to put their judge robes on… The judge is just a dude, right? Or a woman. It’s just a person. They go back in this room and they put on this robe and they get out this little wooden hammer. Then they sit in this really tall chair, and in that moment, they become the Lord God.

And so what happens is whenever you go into judgment mode, right? Whenever you go into judgment mode, you go to the side of your brain that is rational, logical, sequential, and deductive. It seeks to forecast a result. It’s the left hemisphere, and it’s proud. It is so freaking proud. Your pride does not come from your right hemisphere. Your pride comes from your left. And, “Well, here’s what I believe.” And that’s why I don’t care what randos say.

Because whenever a person puts on their robes of judgment, right? They say the stupidest things. And I’m saying you want a person to react emotionally, not logically. And when you ask them to go into logic mode, they will. And it is the worst possible environment to learn anything about advertising. I can show you. I should send it to you. The guy that I really respect just profoundly is actually on a recording. He was with two colleagues on a Zoom call a year or two ago. Anyway, he is… It’s Les Binet. His partner is Peter Field. So Binet and Field are just legends. They’re paid vast amounts of money by the largest advertising agencies in the world to really study things deeply. And I can show you this video in this passage where he explains, a number of years ago, there was a 15-year study.

And what they would do is they were… There’s huge numbers of companies that do pre-testing of ads, right? And they get paid crazy money for pre-testing these ads. And he said, “So what they would do is they would find people who had seen the ad when it first came out and were able to be interviewed by it before public opinion had actually developed about the ad, right?” And so they said it was a short window of time. And that’s every time they had an ad that was pre-tested and then they launched it, they could very quickly measure what people felt about it. And they did this over and over and over and over again for 15 years. You know what they concluded?

Todd Liles: What’s that?

Roy Williams: That pre-testing is about as accurate as flipping a coin. It’s literally about it. And he said, “Now, we couldn’t say that outright because the pre-testing companies would have lost their mind and just gone nuts.” And so we had to kind of soften that and kind of use some weird language to soften that blow. And he said, “But do you know…” and he actually says this, remember, he forgets that… I don’t know that he forgot, but it feels like he forgot he was being recorded. But it’s on YouTube.

And I just get such a kick out of it because he said, “And you know what else?” There’s two other things he says I just love from Les Binet. He said, “If you really wanna know whether an ad’s gonna work, just find out whether or not people like it.” When people see the ad, they like that ad.

And so we’re sitting here laughing our butts over “Whassup?” with the Budweiser ad here a few episodes ago. And I’m going, we’re still… That’s a super old ad, and we’re still laughing. And I’m going, yeah, when people like the ad, those ads are effective. When people don’t like the ad, those ads aren’t effective. And so…

Todd Liles: I think he had a nice expletive in there as well.

Roy Williams: Yeah, what he did, though, what you’re thinking of, what you’re thinking of is whenever he said a lot of times people run this wonderful, artistic, fantastic, amazing piece of copy, and then they’ll have a little stinger on the end. They’ll have 10 seconds on the end of the ad that says, “And call this week and get 10% off on such and such.” And he goes, “That’s how you f*** up a really good ad.”

He said, “So you accomplished all this emotional resonance, and you’ve got people believing in you and feeling good about you,” and then he says, “And then you make it suddenly sound like an ad at the end.” And he goes, “And you undid all this glorious relationship building you’re doing with the customer by ‘Call now and get a free bag of peanuts’ or whatever the stupid little offer is gonna be.” And so when you’re listening to the really, really big boys… Les Binet doesn’t know I’m alive, but I have admired him from afar for a long time. Peter Field’s also very good. But Les is brilliant, deeply, deeply, deeply scientific, and very entertaining.

Todd Liles: That’s awesome.

Roy Williams: Yeah.

Todd Liles: Well, Roy, you already addressed my question. I don’t know that you know, but I was gonna ask you, if a listener is gonna be writing their own words this week or trying to put together a spot, what would you tell them about the art of balancing science and copy together? And I think you just told them, which is if you’re doing it, don’t end it with what Les Binet says. Don’t end it with a call now respond.

Roy Williams: Don’t do that.

Todd Liles: Don’t do that. Roy, thank you so much. This is another fun episode, and it was fun to deeply explore the science and art with you. My closing thought to this is that if you really want a real visceral life experience of science and art, probably attending the Magical Worlds is one of the best places to do that.

Roy Williams: And I’m gonna tell you, it’s not a spoiler, Todd. On the final day of Magical Worlds, you’re gonna be given a line. Now, you’ve been writing some ads for your business each day and learning techniques, and on the last day, you’re gonna be given a line that you did not choose. And it’s a line from which no intelligent ad could possibly begin. And you’re going to write the best thing you ever wrote in your life. Always, people go, “This is the best thing I’ve ever written.” And it’s what you mentioned… I don’t know if it was earlier in this episode or in a previous episode, but you mentioned the creative handcuffs.

Todd Liles: Right.

Roy Williams: You mentioned when you have boundaries and when you’re not given a blank sheet of paper, but you’re told certain things that you don’t get to choose and they have to be there. And it’s like, “Wow, that’s hard. I don’t even know if it’s even possible to create something really cool when I have certain specific things I have to do and a certain amount of time I can’t go beyond.” And actually, it brings out the best in you. It brings out the best in people when they have to figure out how to make this horribly stupid line make sense.

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