Dear Reader,

As a child, I had a hard time remembering to feed the pigs.

I’d come home from school and do what boys do. By nightfall, the pigs were hungry, and I was already in bed.

I never did this on purpose. I was a boy, and distractions came easy.

Until one night. My stepdad woke me up in the cold darkness and made me feed them. I was barefoot, wet, and covered in the smell of pig manure. That experience seared itself into my memory with adrenaline and cortisol.

As a child, I had a hard time remembering to feed the pigs.

I’d come home from school and do what boys do. By nightfall, the pigs were hungry, and I was already in bed.

I never did this on purpose. I was a boy, and distractions came easy.

Until one night. My stepdad woke me up in the cold darkness and made me feed them. I was barefoot, wet, and covered in the smell of pig manure. That experience seared itself into my memory with adrenaline and cortisol.

I never forgot to feed the pigs again — though I also hated my stepdad.

You don’t want your clients to hate you. You want them to think of you first when the need arises.

You want them to love you before they ever meet you.

You do this by flooding the brain with memorable, positive experiences that trigger dopamine. Surprise and delight are the tools.

Do it over and over again, and you create an automatic habit: when the need arises, they think of you first.

Thinking of you becomes a habit.

This is branding.

Watch / listen above or read below

Todd Liles: Roy, welcome to another episode.

Roy Williams: Good to be here as always.

Todd Liles: It’s my pleasure as well. And today we’re doing episode number 23. Episode number 23, repetition is powerful. Repetition is powerful. Repetition is powerful. Roy, repetition is powerful is today’s topic. And the purpose of this is because there is a very clear thing that happens in the brain when an action or sequence is repeated over and over and over and over again. And today I want to take a deep dive into the power of this.

Well, here’s one of the things that I love that you say: consistency is the frequency of the frequency, the repetition of the repetition. That’s a mouthful, but it’s true. So in today’s episode, we’re going to dive into the works that you do in the Monday Morning Memo, and we’re going to dig into the works of one of your favorite authors, Charles Duhigg.

Roy Williams: Yes.

Todd Liles: And I’m also going to bring in one of my favorites as well, which is James Clear, and specifically his great book, Atomic Habits. Because whether we are talking about branding, becoming the first people that people think of, or becoming the first actions people take, in a way, it is a form of habit. And I think today’s episode is going to be really powerful for the listener. So I’m going to ask, are you excited about this? Because we’re going…

Roy Williams: I’m extremely excited.

Todd Liles: It’s going to be fun, I think.

Roy Williams: Oh, you’re speaking my love language.

Todd Liles: I love it. I love it. All right, we got three topics today, Roy. And topic number one is relevance times repetition equals procedural memory. So, Roy, you’ve defined procedural memory as the following: it’s the key to your branding automatically being remembered. Accomplish this through relevance times repetition. And I love the title of the article. It’s “Is Yours a Brand or a Bland?”

Roy Williams: Yes.

Todd Liles: Now, I like that.

Roy Williams: And that was 18 years ago.

Todd Liles: 18 years ago.

Roy Williams: A lot of other people have used similar language, but I don’t think you’ll find anybody that used it before I did.

Todd Liles: I don’t think so either, which is one of the reasons I wanted to point it out. So, Roy, here’s the first question. Why do you think repetition is a better word than frequency when it comes to talking to business owners? Or is it? Maybe I’m assuming.

Roy Williams: No, it’s absolutely a better word. Now, technically, you said, “You’ve chosen the phrase procedural memory.” No, no, no. Every cognitive neuroscientist in the world calls it procedural memory.

Todd Liles: Thank you.

Roy Williams: I just call it what it actually is known as. So, procedural memory is automatic involuntary recall. PTSD is a negative form of procedural memory. Automatic involuntary recall of a moment when you had a high level of adrenaline in your blood. Adrenaline is the biochemical adhesive that lays down the trace in the brain that causes a memory to become automatic, involuntarily recalled.

Todd Liles: Do you know what part of the brain? Do you recall?

Roy Williams: No, it’s the entire cortex. The cortex is the skin on the potato. It’s the outer surface of the brain. That’s where all the activity happens. Now, that’s where most of these little chemical traces are left, which is why, even in athletics, form is incredibly important, because if you don’t have right form, repetition is teaching your brain a whole bunch of different ways to do something.

And so you want to train your brain: this is exactly the correct way, the correct way, the correct way. And a professional, I mean, a good amateur has practiced enough that they can do it right. A real pro has practiced so much with perfect form that they cannot do it wrong. They can no longer do it wrong.

And so what you’re talking about as a habit is technically known as procedural memory. It’s automatic, involuntary, and the amount of passion that you bring to the endeavor changes the adrenaline in your blood.

Todd Liles: Absolutely.

Roy Williams: If you don’t care and there is no adrenaline, then there’s not a strong trace left. Now, this was actually discovered roughly 17, 18 years ago, that adrenaline was the biochemical adhesive, by the Mayo Clinic. And it was kind of by accident.

Now, Melissa Blevins was her name before she got married. I can’t remember her married name, but Melissa Blevins was and probably still is the head of Solid Organ Transplants at the Mayo Clinic. Wonderful, wonderful human being. Wonderful, wonderful story about how she got that position and why she got that position we don’t have time to go into, but Melissa was in class one day, and before she got married she was there a lot, and she said, “Oh, oh, oh, oh, that thing you teach, we recently discovered how that happens.”

And so she told me the whole thing. It was amazing. But I just wanted you to know when something really matters to you, relevance. Relevance, relevance, relevance times repetition. That is the formula that creates procedural memory. How much does it matter to you? Relevance. How much do you care? Adrenaline. Okay, times repetition. Relevance times repetition equals procedural memory. The higher the relevance, the bigger the moment.

You’re in fear of your life in a war zone. A repetition of one, or I don’t want to bring it up, but rape victims, a repetition of one, there’s so much adrenaline that they can have automatic involuntary recall of that and have a panic attack, which is a form of PTSD. So what I’m saying is we know this. They used to call it shell shock back in the days of World War I and World War II. We now know it as post-traumatic stress disorder. That also works in a positive way. Okay? If you bring a lot of passion to something and you rehearse something, it becomes natural to you. It was awkward at first, but now it’s natural.

It’s automatic. You’re elegant at it. You’re good at it. And when you use emotional language credibly, credibly, not phony, smarmy, Hallmark card, touchy-feely language, but whenever you tell stories and you trigger a customer bond where the customer goes, “I like these people,” okay? Boom. Relevance. They found relevance. And if you have relevance and repetition, you build a brand.

Todd Liles: Well, when we get into the next sections, we’re gonna dig deep into that because I think it’s really important, really powerful, and some of the readings that I’ve been doing have really opened my eyes up to it in a unique way. But before we do, give me one brand that you think has just really mastered this approach of repetition, repetition, repetition and just searing positively into the brain of their audience.

Roy Williams: Okay. Every client I’ve ever worked with for 40 years has mastered it because I wrote their ads.

Todd Liles: Right. And we bought their media buy.

Roy Williams: Yeah, of course. And so with Ken, it was G-O-E-T-T-L, we’ll keep you cool, but it’s hard to spell. And so it’s a goofy thing, but nobody knows how to spell Goettl. And so you have to say, “Goettl, G-O-E-T-T-L, we’ll keep you cool, but it’s hard to spell.”

And then with Dewey Jenkins, it was “Call Morris Jenkins.” And Mr. Jenkins told me, “Mr. Jenkins told me,” and then the next technician says, “Mr. Jenkins told me,” and the third technician says, “Mr. Jenkins told me,” and the fourth technician says, “Mr. Jenkins told me.” Then the fifth technician says what Mr. Jenkins told all of them.

Now all of a sudden, you know what Dewey Jenkins believes, and you bond with Dewey Jenkins because you believe what he believes. You believe the same thing. You see the world through similar eyes. And so “Mr. Jenkins told me” opened the ad, and every ad ended with “Call Morris Jenkins.” We don’t give ’em the phone number, but we begin with a verb, “Call Morris Jenkins.” And then we can go on down the line. It’s like every campaign has a phrase.

Now, predictability kills advertising, but consistency is the lifeblood of advertising. What’s the difference between predictability and consistency? Okay, the fact that you always know, like in the TV ads in the early years, “Mr. Jenkins?” “Yes, Bobby.” Every ad, Bobby’s in the driver’s seat of the van. “Mr. Jenkins?” He would say, “Yes, Bobby.” And you knew, oh, oh, oh, turn it up, turn it up, turn it up, because Bobby was about to say something completely whack. I mean, just completely off the hook.

“How much should a hamster weigh?” or something. It’s like Bobby was gonna say something crazy, and Dewey was not gonna roll his eyes or be a jerk or be demeaning in any way. And he was gonna be very gracious, and he was gonna answer Bobby’s question. And the fact that Mr. Jenkins was so nice to Bobby made people love Dewey Jenkins. Now, he really was like that. It was the real Dewey. I’m just amplifying the way he is naturally, right? And so there has to be reality in the ad. It has to be authentic. You just amplify things that are already there. That’s how you build a brand.

And then whenever at the end of the ad, it was never Dewey that said, “Call Morris Jenkins.” That would be a jerk thing to say. He doesn’t ask you for your business. It’s somebody else that says, “Call Morris Jenkins.”

And so those little things… Now, what they’re gonna say in between, here’s the deal. Consistency is a style guide. We always say this and we always say this, and there’s always this music that’s playing, perhaps. There’s little signature things that make all of your ads consistent like bricks in a wall. And it’s also the mortar. The mortar, the consistent things that all the ads do, that’s the mortar that holds the bricks together, right? It’s what binds all the ads together, and it makes it a campaign instead of just a series of ads. It makes it a campaign.

Now, consistency is essential, but predictability, no, no, no, it’s not predictable. Because all of the time between this way we always open, this way we always close, you have no idea, you have no clue what’s gonna happen. So consistency is essential, predictability is deadly. And so how do you become consistent without being predictable? And so I also use the word repetition instead of the word frequency.

Technically, it’s called reach. How many different people are gonna experience this ad? Frequency is how many times will the average person experience this ad within seven nights’ sleep? Within seven nights’ sleep. That’s the correct way to measure it. And a deceptive salespeople will calculate repetition or frequency over a period of, say, 30 days. Well, a three frequency over a period of 30 days means you wasted your money, you’re gonna get no benefit whatsoever.

Todd Liles: Exactly.

Roy Williams: But a repetition of three within seven nights’ sleep, sleep erases advertising. A repetition of three within seven nights’ sleep, you’re gonna have some retention. And if you do it every week, 52 weeks in a row, you’re gonna be the king of however many people you’re reaching. Does this make sense to you?

Todd Liles: It makes total sense. And it actually is a perfect lead-in to the very next thing that I want to cover. All right, so, Roy, the next thing that we’re gonna talk about is we’re gonna dig into the work of Charles Duhigg, and we’re gonna talk about the habit loop connection.

Okay, Roy, I’m really excited to talk to you about this, and here’s the reason why. Everything that we’ve talked about is only confirmed by the additional readings that I do. And just to be clear, audience, I’m not reading things to go, “I want to find out where Roy’s wrong.” No, it’s not like that at all. It’s like I’m reading something that I’m interested in, and it’s like, “Oh, wow, Roy’s right.” From a different angle, same approach.

So Charles Duhigg, in his book The Power of Habit, went into a deep-dive research on trying to answer the question, what creates habits and how do they work? And this is what he found. There’s this thing that’s called the habit loop, and it’s universal, and it goes: there is a cue, then there is a routine, and then there is a reward. There’s many examples of this.

But to give one for someone who might be trying to get into the habit of exercise, he would say one of the ways that you would do it is your cue would be to lay out your clothes in the morning. Inside of Atomic Habits, if you’ve read that, James Clear says the same thing. You lay out the clothes. So you’ve already got the visual stimulation. There’s the clothes. So the routine is the actual event. It’s the thing that you do. Okay, well, now I’m gonna put on the clothes. Maybe I have coffee first, have water, brush my teeth. I do this sequence of events, then I put on the clothes, and then I go for the run or I lift the weights or whatever the case may be.

At the end, there must also be a reward. It must be cue, it must be routine, and it must be reward. Now, the reward is very subjective. For some people, the reward is the endorphin. They hit that endorphin high, they experienced it, they want to feel it again. For other people, that’s not the reward. They aren’t trained enough to hit the endorphin high. So instead, they have to find a different reward. Whether that reward is checking off their list that they did it, satisfaction, whether it was, “Okay, now I get to have my smoothie that I like.” There’s gotta be some type of reward.

And what Charles says is that when we have this cue, routine, reward, cue, routine, reward, what happens is we begin to form a habit. Now, Roy, this is the part that made me go, “Wow.” He talks about the sections of the brain, and he brings up two examples. One example where a young man who was studied his entire life, universally known as H.M., they protected his identity, had a terrible case of seizures, had a grand mal seizure, and he agreed to have his hippocampus removed.

Not knowing… This was early in the days of neurology, they didn’t fully understand what it was. They knew where it was. When they removed it, he immediately lost all ability to retain any short-term memory. “Hi, Roy, how are you? It’s nice to meet you.” You leave the room, you come back, “Hi, Roy, how are you? It’s nice to meet you.” It’s on repetition. So they studied this man his entire life because it was so fascinating.

Now, jump forward. Another man comes along who lived a great life, and in his 70s, he got a viral infection. And when they scanned his brain, it ate away the hippocampus first to the point where you’d lay H.M. And this man’s brain side by side, they look identical. Now, this guy continued to live for another 25 years, by the way, and really happy, et cetera. But all short-term memory, totally erased. Long-term memory he still had. He still knew who his wife was, he knew who his daughter was. He retained long-term memory. It’s a different part of the brain.

Now, this is what they found was interesting. The wife was concerned about him not getting exercise. So they’re like, “Okay, what you’re gonna need to do is you need to go with him every morning, go exercise.” And the reason why she was concerned is because every morning he’d wake up, he’d always want the same meal: breakfast and eggs, breakfast and eggs. To the point that he’d eat the breakfast and eggs and then eat more breakfast and eggs. He remembered how to fix it, but he forgot that he was eating it.

So she started taking him out and going with him on these long walks to keep him healthy. Well, one day she wakes up and he’s gone. And she’s terrified. Where did he go? Where is he? She’s calling everybody, and then he comes back. Now, he comes back with a couple acorns and leaves, and she figured out, well, he went to where they go to the park. But he made his way back. And this is blowing the doctors away. How did he do this? Because this was not part of their routine. This was something that started after the hippocampus is gone. This shouldn’t be happening.

Well, he kept doing this. He’d come back, and sometimes he’d bring back a cat. Where’d you get the cat? I don’t know, but he’s got a cat. Sometimes he’d bring back a dog. Where’d you get the dog? I don’t know. She’d find the neighbor, she’d give it back to ’em. But he always made it back. He did this for 25 years, right? He’s just taking these walks. This is what they ended up figuring out, was that the hippocampus is short-term memory. There are sections of long-term memory, but then there’s a part of the brain, the basal ganglia, which is habits.

And when we go to be the first they think about, if we develop a true habit in someone, it goes even beyond that. Literally, there is no thought connected to it. The body can do an amazingly complex series of things when there’s no thought that’s ever connected to it. And what they have found is that if we tie that same concept to things like artists who are the highest at their craft, oftentimes they are switching it from hippocampus to long-term memory storage directly into the basal ganglia. It is literally something that no thought is required. Even when the ability to think about it is gone, they can still perform amazingly complex actions. And I started reading about this going, holy crap.

Roy Williams: One of the things, musicians, professional musicians, even when they have dementia or when they’re high on heroin, they can still play the instrument and they can play the song flawlessly. And it’s because of the… When you’re talking about habits, I just want to point out the number of times that I’ve said, a great, many of our purchases are driven through identity reinforcement. We buy a lot of what we buy to remind ourselves and announce to the world around us who we are. And habits are a form of identity reinforcement. Part of the reward is every day you get up and you do this thing and it reminds you of who you are. And so identity reinforcement is a very, very, very powerful thing, and it is the single most useful tool to an ad writer. So please keep going.

Todd Liles: So this is where I’m going with all this, right? They even, by the way, go into the study of Claude Hopkins. And Claude Hopkins in his own works, which was a tremendous advertisement man, he made millions and millions and millions…

Roy Williams: 100 years ago.

Todd Liles: 100 years ago. I have this Claude Hopkins book of direct marketing in my library in there. But he wrote the term cue, routine, reward. He wrote that out. And what often happens is neurologists and psychologists actually study what other people know just to prove that they’re right, but then they figure out why they’re right. Like, Claude knew he was right because he was making millions upon millions of dollars. He just didn’t know why he was right.

So when he would write anything related to ad, or when he… Perfect example was Pepsodent. Everyone knew to brush their teeth; no one was brushing their teeth. And Pepsodent came to him and said, “Hey, we want you to take us on.” And he said, “I’m not gonna do it unless I can make a million dollars on it.” And they said, “Well, we’ll give you a piece of the company.” And he goes, “Let me think about it.”

So he went away and started thinking about what was the cue. And he came up with a cue, and the cue was: rub your tongue along your teeth. Everybody rubs their tongue along their teeth, and he goes, “You feel that film?” Everybody’s like, “Yeah.” He goes, “That film is what’s keeping you from your best, brightest, prettiest smile. Pepsodent removes the film.” So the cue: rub the tongue along the teeth. Routine statement, right? And reward: you brush your teeth, the reward is you’re gonna have a beautiful smile.

Now, he also said, “Hey, before we do that, there’s a couple other things we need to do. We need to give them a bigger reward because clean teeth is not enough,” because they’d been trying to sell toothpaste for 50 years. No one’s buying. He goes, “Let’s make it taste good, and let’s put a little bit of irritant in it.” So that tingling sensation when we brush our teeth is actually irritation of the gums, but we think it’s a reward. So we taste mint, and our gums get irritated. That was Claude Hopkins. Now, he didn’t write the next part of this, but what he knew without knowing, and he never wrote this in any of his works, is that reward alone is not enough.

Yes, the reward is your teeth are going to be clean. But if you want to make billions, you transition into craving. And he goes, to make a craving, you’ve got to do something that they’re anticipating. They gotta get it every single time. They gotta get that tingling of their teeth. And this is what went through my brain: Get ECO E-C-O. Yeah, Get ECO E-C-O. Those brandable chunks…

Roy Williams: An audio signature.

Todd Liles: Those audio signature brandable chunks. It’s the reason why TikToks are so effective. There is a cue, there is a routine, they’re going to do the same dance every single time, but there is something that is joyful about an audio signature that you just can’t help but listen to. So let’s go to ads now. Let’s go to ads. The cue is the thing that gets it started, whether it’s, “Hey, Mr. Jenkins.” It’s like cue, boom, cue. So I think I’ve laid the foundation, right? So what I want to do is ask this question. Do you think that we can think of an ad, especially the beginning, as the cue that is beginning a new habit loop? Or at least we’re trying to create a new habit loop?

Roy Williams: Absolutely. And Charles Duhigg, by the way, the reason his book was a huge, huge, huge bestseller and stayed at the top of the list for an astoundingly long amount of time is because at exitready.com, you can read all about Charles Duhigg and with direct quotes about his talking about what private equity is and how it works. Now, he won a Pulitzer Prize for what’s called explanatory journalism. In other words, his ability to explain something as a journalist, a storyteller, his ability to explain things and make people understand it. He won a Pulitzer for that. Okay, he won a Pulitzer.

Todd Liles: Come on.

Roy Williams: And so what I’m saying is, yeah, of course his book is good because he’s the king of that. Now, whenever you made the connection, the cue is the predictable open and even the close. Because remember, the close is usually something to remember that will help you take action in the future.

Todd Liles: Right.

Roy Williams: So you’re cueing a future action with your predictable close. With your predictable open, you’re saying, “Oh, these are always fun. Stop talking and listen.” And so that’s the whole goal of the predictable cue. So we are creating a habit of, “Get ready. You love these ads.” And if you do, always surprise them in the middle of the ad. And it’s very entertaining because remember how many times you’ve heard me say entertainment is the only currency with which you can purchase the time and attention of a too busy public?

Todd Liles: Exactly.

Roy Williams: You think you can buy the time and attention of the public from Google? You cannot. You can only get them to possibly click your ad as one of the many ads they’re going to click before they make a choice. My point being, if an ad does not reward the customer for listening, they quit listening to your ads.

So a campaign has to create, it’s like a sitcom, it has to create a narrative arc. It’s like a drama. It has to have chapters. It has to evolve. You have to get to know the characters better and better and better and feel like you really know these people and have a relationship. And so this reward is making a new friend.

It’s called a parasocial relationship. You actually know somebody and you like somebody and you look forward to hearing from them again, and they don’t know you exist in the world. I have a lot of parasocial relationships with people that I follow on YouTube that I just adore, and they don’t know I’m alive. I’m a customer of their content. What is good advertising? It’s freaking content, is what it is.

Todd Liles: Roy, I want to share one more thing with you that was truly mind-bending for me. And the question often comes up, “How can you change a habit? How can you change a habit?” And this is what the study shows: You cannot. You cannot change a habit. But you can alter it a little bit.

Roy Williams: That’s what I was going to say.

Todd Liles: Because the cue is always the same. You might introduce new cues, but you’ve already got subconscious habits built that you don’t know that you’ve got built. The reward is always the same. You like what you like, whether that’s sex or flavorful toothpaste or the endorphin highs or the satisfaction. Your reward center is already built in.

What you change is the routine. You change the routine. So when you go and, like in your writing styles, right, you’re always picking characters that already exist. You’re just wrapping them in new skins. Cue’s the same, reward’s the same. You’re making them feel good, you’re making them laugh, you’re making them be surprised, you’re making them enjoy this relation. Routine is different. You change the routine.

Roy Williams: And what happens is the cue. There’s another technology that says it triggers a replacement thought when you want to change the habit. So when you have this cue, this moment, you say, “Okay, that used to trigger this activity. I will replace that activity with a new activity that delivers the same satisfaction of craving.”

Todd Liles: You’re swapping the reward.

Roy Williams: Swapping the reward.

Todd Liles: And you’re swapping the routine.

Roy Williams: A couple of examples of this, by the way, two different examples. One of which is every alcoholic that had any physical addiction to alcohol will tell you that whenever you’re getting sober, you pound usually like cherry Coke with all the sugar plus extra. And you’re just pounding sugar like crazy because your body is looking for that sugar that it was getting from the alcohol.

And so they still have to drink something that gives them this sugar intake because their body is demanding that. But instead of reaching for alcohol, they just reach for a different kind of sugar that isn’t going to damage them as badly. And then the second one is, it’s an experimental thing, but it has a lot of possibilities. Different drugs trigger different neurotransmitters.

Todd Liles: Correct.

Roy Williams: And what happens is a lot of the treatment centers now have begun to say, “What is a healthy way of generating that same neurotransmitter?” And so if serotonin is what you were getting from your drug, they will teach you fishing and other things that take you into this calm, relaxed, peaceful state. And so we’re gonna help you get your serotonin through a variety of other ways.

Now, what’s called noradrenaline or norepinephrine is what happens. The people who get that from a drug, they tell them to read science fiction and fantasy books because it takes you into an alternate reality, which is what norepinephrine… That’s part of the satisfaction of norepinephrine, is the alternate reality. So what you’re describing is, you have this habit. It still has to be satisfied, but we can deliver an alternate method to give you the same high.

Todd Liles: It’s very good. Exactly what you’re saying. And it’s the interesting thing between what’s going on physiologically, like, how have the chemicals altered the brain in ways that psychology now must deal with? And in many drug cases, like you said, it’s literally changing the brain. It’s damaging the brain, it’s altering the brain, it’s rewiring the brain.

And we can do a certain amount of that rewiring through the work of psychology, but we gotta take them both into account. And one of the things that was in the book, this’ll be the last point on the book that I’ll make. I really highly recommend it. It’s a great book to anyone that wants to read it.

Roy Williams: Tell them the name again.

Todd Liles: It’s The Power of Habit. He was talking about how AA was formed. And when they were interviewing all of these AA members and they were asking the questions that essentially were saying, “What was the reward that you were seeking?” They didn’t ask it that way. They asked it a different way, but they were getting to the essence of it.

Very few alcoholics are actually seeking to get drunk. They’re seeking to forget. They’re seeking to bond socially. They’re seeking all of these other things that are not about feeling like they’re intoxicated. It’s about something else. So what they had said was what they realized was that the reason, one of the many reasons in which AA works so well, ’cause it’s super criticized because their group structure is very informal.

They basically don’t have a plan. It’s people getting together and talking about life. But what the psychologists that were criticizing that have only become to recently understand is that if you look at a lot of alcoholics, they’re in bars, they’re in places where they’re actually trying just to talk about life. They’ve replaced their routine with a new routine. Instead of going to the bar and drinking, come to AA for 90 days straight and let’s talk.

The reward is still the same outcome. Now, that’s not to say that you don’t have to handle the physiology side of it. There’s a real physiological break to addiction that has to be addressed. But when we take in the psychology side of it, it’s like, boom.

Roy Williams: Yeah. I never thought about it that way, but it’s obviously true, is that if the social connection that you went to the bar to have to see the people you always see there, just give ’em a different place to see the people they always see and have a lot of conversations and bonding and just let ’em drink bad coffee instead of expensive alcohol.

Todd Liles: Yeah. And even though I’m bringing a new light to it, the thing that I want the listener to understand and hear what I’m saying is that you’ve always made… And if anyone’s ever been to Magical Worlds or any of the classes or have taken a minute to read any of the content, they will find that you have always been really diligent about backing up your beliefs with science.

Roy Williams: Sure.

Todd Liles: And it’s just one more piece of evidence that backs up that what we’re doing, is it relational branding and marketing? Absolutely. But it’s also scientifically based.

Roy Williams: Of course.

Todd Liles: And I think that’s good. Let’s go to point number three on today, okay? Point number three is the compounding effect of consistency. I got a quote here from James Clear, and it’s that, “Small repeated actions compound like interest.” In branding, he didn’t say this, now I’m saying this, he said the first part, in branding, repeated exposure compounds trust and recall until the brand feels inevitable. So, Roy, what happens when a company quits branding too soon before the compounding effect has a chance to kick in?

Roy Williams: They wind up saying, “I tried TV and it didn’t work. I tried radio and it didn’t work for this category. Maybe it works for other categories, but it doesn’t work for mine.” And I’m saying the number of people that have tried it, and I’m gonna say something that’s really tacky. Okay. The people that own the broadcast stations of America do not teach their staff how to make it work. They teach their staff how to sell it.

Todd Liles: Yes.

Roy Williams: And I’m horrified by that because the people who sell it are not trained to know how to make it work. And I’m just going, that is why people have lost confidence in broadcasting. And I’m going, gosh, this is so easily fixed, but nobody listens to me. Only people that believe in me enough to give me money pay attention to me. But the people I tell stuff for free, they go, “Well, that’s just his opinion.” I’m going, nope. Actually, it’s deeply researched and can absolutely be proven.

My point being this, by the way, I’m gonna put it this way. We have one schedule that we run for every client, which is almost 1,000 clients, 87 partners throughout the US, Canada, and Australia. You know what it is? We’re gonna achieve reaching the identical same people. You know how it determines how many people we can reach? The amount of money we have.

Todd Liles: Sure.

Roy Williams: That’s it. How much money we have determines how many people we can reach. The non-negotiable is we are absolutely going to correctly do the math. And the people that sell it don’t do the math correctly. You can’t trust their math.

But if you do the math correctly and say we’re gonna reach every one of these people at least three times within seven nights’ sleep, every week, 52 weeks in a row until Jesus returns. I now have clients that we’ve been running 52 weeks a year with a three repetition, a three frequency. The average person hears it. If they hear it, they hear it at least three times a week, actually hear it. So that’s 156 times a year.

And I’ve had people doing it for 37 years that are still clients, and they’ve become huge. They are the dominant stores in their category in all the towns where they are. They’re the overwhelming monster kings, without fail. And they’ve spent all of their money on one freaking thing all these years, it’s broadcast radio. And what I’m saying is, or you can do it with TV just as easily. Just as easily. The point is you cannot target with mass media.

They call it mass media for a reason. And by the way, did you know that every person in the world that has a friend is an influencer? People talk about influencers, influencers. “What do you think about influencer marketing?” Man, I believed in influencer marketing before there was an internet. The influencers are the people in your life whose opinion you actually will listen to. And so you don’t have to win the target customer if you just win 25 of their best friends.

And it’s like this is, it’s not hard. You don’t target with mass media. You win the hearts and minds of people. How many people can you afford to own and carry around in your pocket? Your budget determines that, but the method never changes, the schedule never changes, the kind of ads you write doesn’t change. It’s just understanding what works and what does not. The end.

Todd Liles: The end. Roy, so the next thing that we’re going to do is I want to show you an ad. And I believe that this ad has done a very good job of following the cue, routine, reward set of sequences. By the way, it’s LiMu Emu and Doug. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen them or not, but you’re about to.

Roy Williams: Nope.

Todd Liles: All right, let’s check it out.

 

Announcers: LiMu Emu and Doug.

Doug: Okay, here’s what you want to do. Save hundreds when Liberty Mutual customizes your car insurance.

Golfer: Are you a caddy?

Doug: No, I’m a Doug. And that’s a LiMu.

Golfer: Okay, I’m gonna putt now.

Doug: Okay, I’m gonna watch you putt.

Second Golfer: Oh, nice birdie.

Doug: Yes, he is a very nice birdie. Oh no, LiMu! The carts!

Announcer: Only pay for what you need. Liberty, Liberty, Liberty, Liberty.

Todd Liles: Yeah. So if we take a look at the Liberty Mutual, Liberty Mutual does a couple of things. They’ve got Doug and LiMu. Insurance companies always seem to get ads right, by the way.

Roy Williams: Oh, yeah, yeah.

Todd Liles: They’ve got “Liberty, Liberty, Liberty,” but they’ve also got another audible, a brandable chunk, which is “Liberty Biberty.” I don’t know why, but “Liberty Biberty,” it works. So when you take a look at this campaign, my question to you is what parts of that in this cue, routine, reward clearly pop out and go, “Boom, these are the things they’re doing”?

Roy Williams: Okay, so Doug is the obvious, let’s just call him the definitive nerd. And he’s very intense and socially awkward. He approaches total strangers, gets in their space, and does weird things. Okay, what was on The Big Bang Theory?

Todd Liles: Sheldon.

Roy Williams: Sheldon. So Doug is just a Sheldon with a different haircut. Okay. And the emu, right? Now, it’s not just an emu. It’s an emu with clothes on, right? And…

Todd Liles: Glasses and a badge.

Roy Williams: Yeah, it’s just like it’s a weird, weird, weird emu. Now, the emu is the out-of-control, crazy Mr. Magoo sidekick who you just, you can’t keep the sidekick under control. So you’ve got Sheldon Cooper and then this out-of-control, chaos-on-a-stick character.

And I’ve only seen one ad. It was this one, but I’m going, no, those are really, really, really classic characters, and they’re both incredibly interesting. And if you put two weird characters together and they’re always interrupting normal people who are minding their own business.

Now, the golfer, did you notice how gracious he was? So the weirdo, Mr. Jenkins. And then the normal guy goes, “Yes, Bobby.” And then the weirdo does something weird. And then it’s the reaction. The golfer is the one that’s like he’s being annoyed here, right? And everything he does, he’s tolerating Doug the weirdo, right? But Doug, what does he always want to talk about?

Todd Liles: He wants to talk about the…

Roy Williams: Liberty Mutual.

Todd Liles: Yeah, save some money.

Roy Williams: He’s obsessive. He’s an obsessive guy. Sheldon was an obsessive guy. You’ve got the obsessive nerd guy, and the obsessive nerd guy is a true believer, always a true believer. Now, Sheldon Cooper was a theoretical physicist, okay? And he’s always talking about theoretical physics, and he believes in science, and he’s obsessed about it, and it’s part of what makes him adorable. Weirdos that are true believers in something are adorable, even though they’re annoying as hell.

And then he has the sidekick, the emu, that’s even weirder than he is and absolutely out of control, just chaos with a jet engine. And I’m going, yeah, of course that works.

Todd Liles: Of course it works.

Roy Williams: Of course it does. It’s a tried-and-true slapstick bit from the early 1900s. It’s just, this is, it is a proven thing. Most people don’t have the courage to do that, though.

Todd Liles: The courage.

Roy Williams: Courage.

Todd Liles: Because that’s the thing I was thinking about this, right? And they don’t have the courage. They see this emu. Parts of the emu are real, and some of the emu is CG, right? People are going, “I don’t have the money for that.” And then something occurred to me, which was, Roy, have you seen what Charlie Moger and Johnny Molson are doing with their puppet ads?

Roy Williams: Yeah, I saw when Charlie very, very, very first introduced those. He showed ’em to me, and I’m going, “Oh, gee.” That’s what it does. It lets him use the actual voices of the clients. But it’s basically, you can’t say Muppets because it’s a trademark thing. But the whole top of the head opens up, you know, and I’m going, “Okay.” And so he has those made that look exactly like the clients, if the client was, in fact, a person that the whole top of their head opened up whenever they talk.

And so anyway, it gives him control of cost, and the people don’t have to fly to town every time they need to shoot. He’s in Houston. Charlie has a big, big place in Houston and walls of trophies. People call it Charlie’s Hardware. It’s his walls and walls and walls of trophies they’ve won for production. And so he did that as a cost-effective shortcut. And then he has all of these huge puppets and the puppeteers, and he just has to get the script written by the great writers of the Wizard of Ads team. And then Charlie, who has this huge bunch of people, produces the TV ad, sends them off, and they always work.

Todd Liles: It always works. And so the reason why I wanted to point that out was because if we looked at a Liberty Mutual ad, even if you deduct the fact that they’re paying really, really, really high-end media producers, I’m sure that that’s a massive agency in New York or LA or something. It’s probably tens of millions of dollars to shoot a commercial, and then they gotta get it out there. The reason why I bring it up with…

Roy Williams: It’s usually half a million on the low end, million and a quarter on the high end.

Todd Liles: There you go. Still, that’s a lot of money.

Roy Williams: Yeah.

Todd Liles: So the reason why I bring up the Charlie and Johnny thing is you can actually get super creative things done when you get creative inside of your limited budget. And for them, it’s like, “Hey, we can replicate this. We’re not gonna train an ostrich and not gonna hire animal handlers, but we can get puppets.”

Roy Williams: Now, here’s whenever you say, we call it Repurpose the Proven.

Todd Liles: Repurpose the Proven.

Roy Williams: Repurpose the Proven. Now, here’s what happens. Jim Henson proved that you could create a show that people would adore for decades with puppets. They even have movies with Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy and Gonzo and all these other characters, right, that are puppets. And they’re going major motion picture theater movies with puppets.

And so we don’t have to worry about whether or not this technique works. As a matter of fact, we have a whole body of evidence to study called all the episodes of The Muppet Show. And then you’re going, “Okay, this is not hard to do.” And what does nobody ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever see in TV ads? Muppets.

Todd Liles: Exactly. It’s a perfect cue. As soon as you see that puppet, you’re cued, right? You were cued.

Roy Williams: They’re not Muppets, but they look similar to Muppets.

Todd Liles: Right. But you’re cued for a good time. You’re already ready to have a good time.

Roy Williams: Yes.

Todd Liles: So now the routine, you change up a little bit. What do I mean by change the routine? What’s the message? What are we saying? But the reward’s gonna be the same. The reward is I’m gonna feel good at the end of this. I’m probably gonna laugh, I’m probably gonna giggle.

Roy Williams: But the characters have to be… The banter has to be that kind of entertaining, fun banter. In other words, you can’t do it without personality.

Todd Liles: 100%.

Roy Williams: And so you have to have clients that are willing to have personality and to play their parts so that the public will love them.

Todd Liles: Roy, great show today. What is the one thing you want the listener to take away?

Roy Williams: Rules are for fools. You need to break the rules and quit creating ads that sound, look, feel, and smell like ads.

Todd Liles: Thank you, Roy. Well, listener, repetition is powerful. Repetition is powerful. Repetition is powerful. It builds habits, habits build trust, and trust builds businesses. The right message, repeated with relevance, becomes part of your customer’s mental furniture. Pull up a seat. It’s nice here.

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