Dear Reader,

Stories are the key to attention.

Attention is the precursor to money.

If you want more money, then you need better stories.

Better stories are remembered.

They change perspectives. They alter reality. They set events in motion.

They change the world.

They propel small home service companies forward into large home service companies.

We are hardwired for stories. We crave them.

So let Roy and me show you how to craft your company story.

Come sit around the fire and listen closely.

Watch / listen above or read below

Todd Liles: Roy, welcome to another Todd Liles and, really, it’s The Wizard of Ads that’s here with me today, and I appreciate you being here.

Roy Williams: Well, it’s always good to be here, Todd.

Todd Liles: You know, this is episode number 26.

Roy Williams: Gee.

Todd Liles: 26. So we’ve got 52 of them planned. So this is officially the halfway point of the journey that we pre-mapped out in advance to say we’re going to take people on a destination with us.

Roy Williams: Awesome.

Todd Liles: So I’m excited about it.

Roy Williams: I am, too.

Todd Liles: So today’s topic is why stories sell, essentially why humans are hardwired for stories. That’s what we’re going to be jumping into. And we’ve mentioned stories throughout the conversation, but today we’re going to really dive into this. How does that sound to you?

Roy Williams: Perfect.

Todd Liles: Wonderful. Good. So for the audience, I’m going to do just a little bit of an introduction here. Everyone, we are diving really deep into why stories matter, why they’re important. And for some people, stories might seem a little bit too creative for them. They might even seem a little risky, like, “Do I really want to go into storytelling mode?”

But the bigger that you become, the more you will realize just how critical it is. As you are growing in revenue, what you’re going to realize is that it’s not just the stories that are inside your business, but it’s the stories that are outside your business and how they have to align and why they’re so powerful. So that’s what we’re going to talk about today. We’re going to talk about why stories sell, why they stick in the mind, and why the smartest companies use them with discipline.

Now, Roy, as always, today’s information is coming from your writings and your works, from your Wizard of Ads books and from your Monday Morning Memos. And as we get into it, I will make sure that we reference specifically which memo or which chapter…

Roy Williams: Sure.

Todd Liles: In which book that we’re going through. All right, so our very first segment is going to be segment number one. It’s the stories that we tell ourselves. And, Roy, this is the quote, and this is from Wizard of Ads, Chapter 17, “Furnishings of the Mind.” “When people hear a story, they imagine it. When they imagine it, they experience it. And when they experience it, they remember it.”

Okay. I’m going to dive into a little bit of a personal topic because I got to thinking about the stories. And the stories that we tell inside of our business, they almost become the legends of our business. And one of the stories that will always come up when we have a big team meeting is the decision point that Shannon and I had to make when our back was up against the wall. Willow was sick in the hospital. We were facing a massive lawsuit. And I sat out in my car and had a real heartfelt moment where I prayed out to God, said, “If I’m supposed to do this, I need you to clear some paths, give me a sign, because I’m going to go in here and I’m going to talk to Shannon and say, ‘Do you think this is what we’re supposed to do?'”

“And if so, how far are we willing to take it? Are we willing to sell our house to raise money to fight?” And without hesitation, Shannon said, “Absolutely.” So for us, that was a story of facing a giant.

Roy Williams: Right.

Todd Liles: And we’ve used that internally for a very long time to bring clarity to the point that we’re doing this on purpose with a reason. So my question now is not necessarily that story, but I think every company has those decision points, those pivot points, their moment of facing the huge obstacle. Now, internally, that’s amazing. But is there ever a place to use a story like that externally?

Roy Williams: The origin story, when you’re beginning a brand new campaign and you’re introducing yourself to a group of people who have never heard of you or your company or your product or your service, if you’re thinking long-term, sometimes to capture the essence of how you became who you are is to let people see the forces and choices and circumstances and decisions that you made. Now, this causes a person to feel like they know you.

They say, “Wow, okay, I probably would have done the same thing,” or, “I understand why he did that.” But more importantly, people respond. They go, “Wow, this person’s talking to me as though I’m a trusted friend. This person is telling me things that normally a business owner would be too proud to say.” And that vulnerability is the key to intimacy for people to feel like. It’s called a parasocial relationship. They feel like they know you. Now, you are on radio or TV or YouTube or Facebook, and you don’t even know they exist out there. [chuckle] You don’t know they exist, but they feel like they know you. And that’s the first step into becoming the company they think of first and the one they feel the best about when they finally need what you sell.

Now, when you were talking about the story, what I wrote about that’ll be published, well, it’ll be September 15th, which is, at the time of this recording, next Monday. I’m talking about icons, myths, and archetypes. Now, an icon is an artifact that represents something much bigger than itself, an idea much bigger than itself. A myth is a story that represents an idea much bigger than itself.

And so an origin story is not the details and circumstances essentially. That’s what makes the story believable. But it is the choices, the forces, the moments of self-definition that are bigger than the story itself and more universal than the story itself. So everybody has this iconic, mythic story of their journey. And it’s important to know that story. And there are occasions when you tell it correctly, it is a tool for bonding with other people, for them to say, “Yes, I understand this man. I understand this woman. I understand how he makes decisions. I understand the things that he values and things that matter to him, even though he didn’t tell us what they are.”

And so when the reader, the listener, the viewer, the customer makes an assumption on their own, and when they come to a conclusion, they own that conclusion. This is not something that you convinced them of. This is something they concluded on their own. And you’ll never take it away from them, nor will you ever convince them that they’re wrong, because they came to this conclusion based upon some things they perceived.

So perceptive reality, perceptual reality, is just as powerful as objective reality. So people like to tell objective reality: facts and figures and data and features and benefits. Okay, okay, okay, okay. Those things matter later. But the first thing they have to do is say, “Do I like and trust this organization? Do they believe what I believe?” And so that sense of first making a point of contact.

Then I mentioned archetypes. An archetype is just a sequence, a pattern of events, a pattern of behavior, if you will. And so an archetype is, okay, there are certain patterns of behavior from which we choose. And that particular memo, which I think is… I don’t remember what it’s called, “Attraction to the Iconic.”

Todd Liles: Nice.

Roy Williams: “Attraction to the Iconic.” And when I start talking about archetypes, this is a behavior pattern that our society reverences and admires. And there’s a number of those. And we each choose a pattern of behavior that we admire. You know what a role model is? A role model is a personal archetype that you follow.

Todd Liles: That makes sense.

Roy Williams: And so there’s this behavior pattern in your mind, and that archetypal behavior pattern says, “I want to be one of those people.” And so that is your role model. And when you find somebody that says, “I want to be like him or like her,” it’s just a personalized archetype.

Todd Liles: You know, Roy, what’s going through my mind about this is that I think about the stories that we tell early in a campaign from a business-to-client perspective. And I think that because I’m a business-to-business perspective, where the personalities that I’m speaking with are typically going to be people that are in the trades, I tend to contemplate the stories that wouldn’t be interesting to their consumer. We’ve definitely got to make sure that the consumer’s buying. That’s who’s supporting and paying the bills.

But I think that what I just realized as I was listening to you speak is those stories that I would love to read about are probably actually sitting on their about page. They’re the stories that aren’t necessarily going to take five minutes to ten minutes and be put out there as a promotional ad, but they might be an internal video that’s still just as powerful, but it’s a little bit deeper of a dive.

And it’s like Apple. None of their stories that they’ve put out there publicly have necessarily been about the struggles that Steve Jobs has gone through to save the company. But it’s just as tied in to some of those ads that we see. People know the story of Steve Jobs and how that grew Apple. So you just sort of gave me that realization, as I sit here right now, that it’s definitely still a type of branding, if not a type of advertising.

Roy Williams: Yes.

Todd Liles: And it should exist, but it should exist in the right places.

Roy Williams: Your brand is what people believe about you. That’s your brand. And it’s not a logo, it’s not a typeface, it’s not a color scheme. Your brand is what people believe about you and the assumptions they make about you and the personality that they associate with you.

Todd Liles: So Roy, the next thing that we want to talk about is segment number two, which is stories inform strategy. Because what you’ve made abundantly clear to me many, many times is that if we have an amazing story, that is because there is something amazing about someone’s life, and if we can just capture what that is, then the strategy will start becoming self-apparent. So Roy, let’s jump into that.

Roy Williams: This is the important part. See, everybody thinks that success in advertising is about choosing the right media to deliver your message. Media has very little to do with it. Any media will work if you use the right message.

Todd Liles: Yeah.

Roy Williams: And the message is a story. Now here’s the problem. Stories… Allan Gurganus said this many years ago. Stories only happen to people who can tell them. [laughter] And there is a bit of truth in that. It sounds arrogant, but one of the most important things that we do at Wizard of Ads Inc., all of the partners are trained to keep a person talking. And it’s usually during the epic lunch.

We sit down in the morning, we spend an all-day thing with somebody, and we listen closely. We write down everything in the world they want to accomplish before the end of the day. And then as those things are accomplished, we mark each one off the board to their satisfaction. “Have we covered that to your satisfaction?” “Absolutely.” “Cool.” Then we mark it off. Now this gives the day a sense of structure and organization. But the real work is when we go and we take them to a nice lunch somewhere, quiet restaurant, big table…

Todd Liles: That’s right.

Roy Williams: Load the table with food, we’re pouring the wine, and then we just start getting them to tell us things about themselves. And so everybody thinks this is relaxation time, we’re not working right now. No, no, no, no, no, no. That is when we find the stories that they never understood…

Todd Liles: Right.

Roy Williams: The importance of that story. And so we know how to tell the stories. Everyone has amazing, amazing stories, but they didn’t realize how important that was. And so usually around the second bottle of wine everybody’s sitting here and they’re bringing more courses and everybody’s nibbling. And so a three-hour lunch, that’s when the real work happens.

Todd Liles: Yeah.

Roy Williams: And so that’s when we come back. Now in the past three weeks I’ve done two of these, and both of them at the end of the day I said, “I am now giving you everything you need to be successful. And here’s the media that you should choose. Here’s how little money you’re going to need to spend. And there’s nothing that Wizard of Ads needs to do for you. We’ve already done it. There you go.” And they’re going, “Well, can I just pay you guys?” And pay us for what? I’ve already told you exactly what to do and how to do it. And they think about it and they go, “Well, can we ever work together?”

I said, “Sure.” 500 million under management, and they want to get to a billion under management. I said, “Great, do this right here.” And I showed them how to do it, and I said, “This is where you’re going to find the information.” And there’s three guys. I said, “No, look, this will get to a billion under management, guarantee it within three years.” And I said, “Just do this.” And they’re going, “Yeah, okay, we believe you’re right. We believe doing the thing you just said will get us there.” I said, “So you don’t actually need anything from us until you get to a billion under management. And then all kinds of doors open up at that level, and you’re going to have money to spend beyond what I told you to go do.”

And they were going, “Wow.” And you know what they said? “I never imagined advertising people could be so honest. We keep trying to hire you, and you keep saying there’s nothing else I can do for you at this time.” You’ve done that, and I’m so proud of that, Todd. Twice in the past week, one of them was yesterday, and it was another business, huge company in Houston.

And I looked at the circumstances, I looked at the category, and I said, “It’s time for you…” it wasn’t home services. I said, “It’s time for you to make a play for America.” I said, “There’s really no growth left for you in Houston.” And I demonstrated that, proved it. And I said, “So this money you want to spend,” I said, “for one-fifth of the money you’re willing to… You’re wanting to spend to try to grow in Houston, you can make a real play for the nation in your category.” It’s a very weird category. He doesn’t really have any major competitors. This is the best guy in the country for this category.

And I said, “You’ve got the inventory, you’ve got the knowledge, you’ve got the 24,000 feet.” And I said, “Dude, is anybody in the country like you?” And he goes, “No.” And I said, “You’re going to start a YouTube channel, dude. You’re not going to pay to promote your content. But everybody that loves your category will find it.” And I said, “And then you’ll be getting orders nationwide.” And when it dawned on him, it’s like, “Whoa.” And whenever… It took me a long lunch to figure out what made this guy really, really, really special because it wasn’t top of mind for him. And I’m sitting there going, “I have never heard of anything like this.”

And so I started asking him, “Who else does this?” And so, “Does anybody else do this at your level?” And he’s kind of going, “No. Well.” And I’m going, “Huh.” So all I was doing is finding a story that already existed. The story informed the strategy. The strategy was something that never crossed his mind. And as it began to soak in, he’s going, “That’ll work. Why did I never think of this?”

And so just pulling out those story elements. Pulling out those story elements. Everybody has them. But if they’re not professional story creators and assemblers and sequencers, you know what I mean? If that’s not how they’ve lived their life, putting stories together from the bits and pieces, then everybody thinks they don’t have a story. And I’m going, “They always do.” But “stories only happen to people that can tell them” was a funny way of saying if you can’t tell the story, you can’t even recognize your story. Does that make sense?

Todd Liles: Absolutely. Segment number three is we live inside our own stories. Because, Roy, everyone has these beliefs. I call them core values. Some people call them core habits. But everyone’s got these beliefs that are inside of their head. It’s their worldview. It shapes the way they see the world. As a matter of fact, there’s a wonderful quote. Wizard of Ads, Chapter 1, Speaking Worlds into Existence. “We live in a universe of stories. We create them, we believe them, and we are ruled by them.”

So, Roy, here’s the big question. What happens when a company hires the wrong marketing person and their message actually clashes with their true internal customer beliefs?

Roy Williams: It causes a dysfunction and ultimately a sense of betrayal is what the public feels as they’re going, “You act like you’re this, but you’re not. You’re not that at all.” And what people are looking for is they’re looking for somebody who really is who they claim to be. And so the alignment of your statements and the conclusions people come to by listening to you make these statements… They’re coming to conclusions about you. They have expectations about you. You need to deliver exactly what they’re expecting from you.

And if you don’t, if somebody creates clothing for you that doesn’t fit, if they create shoes for you, so to speak. If the advertising people create shoes for you that don’t fit, then you stumble around and you look awkward and you don’t look natural, you don’t look real, and it just comes across as phony and weird. And so I’ve always told the partners, I said, “Guys, if you have the most world-changing strategy for a company and then it hits you, ‘This doesn’t really fit who they are,’ put it on a shelf for somebody. It’ll fit somebody else someday, but not these people.”

Never try to make the client fit what you would do if you ran that company. I said, “It’s not you.” I said, “If plan B, plan C, plan D is the one that really fits the client and they know it, then plan D is the one to go with, not plan A, B, or C, which you like better. It’s plan D, the one that fits, the one that they can pull off, the one they can carry, the one they can wear believably.”

Todd Liles: Yes. I love that. And just to give it from a consulting perspective, which is the world that we’re in, it’s very easy to want to point people in a direction that we know is going to take them where they need to be. However, a client’s got to make certain choices, and we refer to those things as essentially their core value beliefs. But a client’s got to make a certain set of choices along the way. And if we realize that, hey, what they really need to do is they really need to adopt a system that can demonstrate why a system should be replaced and when it should be replaced…

Like, there are appropriate times to do it. That’s sort of one of the first check-ins that we have to have with a client. “When is your concept of when a system should be replaced and why? And what do your people believe and why?” Because as odd as that may seem, that can be one of the biggest internal battles when there’s 10 people and there’s 10 different opinions about what constitutes when a system should be replaced. And that one singular idea can take a company from “We’re doing the right thing” to “We’re actually just fueling the pockets of the owner.”

Roy Williams: Right.

Todd Liles: And what’s weird, when I’m visiting with business owners and I say, “Hey, this is one of the first foundations that we need to get established,” and I can give you guidelines and I can give you things that I know to be true, but ultimately, at the end of the day, you as the business owner are going to have to put the stake in the ground with your people and say, “This is what we practice.” And us as consultants, as long as it’s being ethical and honest. We won’t cross that line ever. But as long as we’re being ethical and honest, we’ll help you get that across to your people. But you’ve got to decide. If you ask us to make that decision, that’s not going to work. You got to decide.

Last segment in today’s episode is why stories must be emotionally true. And in the last segment, Roy, I’d shared with you a personal touch in my life, and you talked about origin stories and how telling those stories is a very powerful thing. And what I want to do now is I want to talk about the art of this, because there is an art in what you might call creative embellishment.

When we are trying to shorten it up and get it out there as quickly as we can and we’re amplifying it, if we do that wrongly, it can go sideways real quick. So my question is, when does creative embellishment and creating these beautiful stories actually just go too far? It misses the mark. It goes from being cute and funny and obvious that that’s a creative embellishment to, “Oh, no, you just lied to me.”

Roy Williams: Well, it’s not quite the way that you framed it.

Todd Liles: Give it to me then.

Roy Williams: When you go so far that people go, “There is no way that’s possibly true. They’re just clowning around.” You’re actually safe when you say something that is so beyond the boundaries of possibility that it is obviously a joke, or you’re just making a point. See what I mean? And then it’s whenever it could, in theory, be true, but it’s not, that’s when you’re in trouble.

And so if I said, “You know, I had this friend, his mom weighed 4,800 pounds,” well, you know that’s not true. I’m just exaggerating. And so when you go into the realm of the absurd, you’re safe. When you exaggerate, you’re going to get caught. But when you’re framing a story and you’re deciding what to leave out, okay, knowing what to include in a story is pretty easy, but knowing what to leave out so you get to the point quicker and move on takes real discipline. And I don’t do it when I’m speaking, but I do it when I’m writing. And when you start leaving things out, you have a new criteria for judgment. Is the story true? Yeah, the story’s true.

Were the details 100% accurate? No, but it’s true. So the story is true, but was 100% of it 100% accurate? Well, because I had to leave some parts out, it’s like I skipped some factors. But did that happen? Yes. Is the story true as told? Yes. Is it complete? No. Does it tell me everything I would have learned had I been there? No, because to include that stuff takes too long and doesn’t really add to the point I’m trying to make. Does that make sense?

Todd Liles: It does. And I think I have another example that is occurring sort of in the home services space right now. And I want to get your perspective on this because you’ve been around the home services for a long time, but you’re still not necessarily a person who understands all of the technical ins and outs…

Roy Williams: Right.

Todd Liles: Because you haven’t been an air conditioning technician.

Roy Williams: Right.

Todd Liles: So there’s a part on an air conditioner that is called a capacitor. And I know that if I use the word capacitor to most homeowners that they probably still don’t know what that word means. It sounds very science fiction by itself. There are ways to explain it. And what we would tell our people in training is explain it in a way that is factually true and also very simple. There’s an alternative training that’s going on in the world right now to where they are training technicians to really mask the fact that it’s a capacitor. Never call it that, because a capacitor can be looked up on Amazon. You can see the price.

Roy Williams: Right.

Todd Liles: They’re coming up with interesting other phrases like dynamic electrical torque booster. And I’m going, to me, a dynamic electrical torque booster doesn’t mean anything in the mind of a homeowner any more than a capacitor does. You’ve just given it something that sounds fancy. I think that’s when you are taking a story too far, because they’re being dead serious. They’re being totally dead serious. And if you fundamentally ask the question like, “Why are you doing that?” “Oh, because homeowners don’t understand how capacitors work.” No, no, no, no, no. Why are you doing that? Don’t give me that bullshit. Because you could describe it in another way that a homeowner could understand. In fact, you could show them one.

Roy Williams: Right.

Todd Liles: Why do you never show them one? Why do you never describe it in a way that it actually works? And if you’ll get the real answer, it’s because the real answer is, because if I told them, they know the truth. And if they knew the truth, they might think I’m charging too much money. To me, that feels unethical and like a lie. That feels like exaggerating. That feels like going to see a doctor who isn’t being straight with you. Do you, from your perspective, if you were a homeowner and someone didn’t shoot you straight on basic questions like, you’re not dumb. You may not know what a capacitor is, but maybe I see this because of the trades that I come from. Maybe it just bothers me, but it bothers me.

Roy Williams: I understand why. And this is one of those areas where you and I come from a little different place. And I do know what a capacitor is. Okay? I know precisely what a capacitor is and what it does. But I’m going to reframe the question. The customer who says, “All right, what’s that part number and how much do you pay for those?” That’s what they want to ask, but instead of asking, they just go online and then they throw it in your face. “Well, that part only cost you this much money. I can buy that part for this much money. You’re charging me too much to do it.”

Todd Liles: True.

Roy Williams: All right. In my world, you don’t want that client. When a client…

Todd Liles: That’s the reality.

Roy Williams: When a client says, remember, at least 80% of your problems come from less than 20% of your customers. And all your energy and all your frustration and all of your distraction and all of your anxiety and all of your anger is caused by a pretty rare little weasel. And I’m going, punt the weasel through the uprights of life. Score three points. And I’m saying, so whenever somebody is being fundamentally unfair, when they think they understand how much it costs you to exist as a business, to just get up in the morning and breathe air, and they think they’re qualified to decide how much you should charge for a part that costs this much. Now, here’s another thing. Okay? There are capacitors that are badly manufactured.

Todd Liles: Of course.

Roy Williams: Discount, and they’re using vegetable oil in these things. And it’s kind of like, you know what? Not all capacitors are created equal. You don’t even want to have that conversation. You shouldn’t have to have that conversation. And so when a person would take off, if I was in business, and somebody said, “Well, I can buy this part for this much,” you know, well done. You should probably do that. And why don’t you go ahead and buy that part and install it? I’ll bet you can find the instructions on how to do that on YouTube. And I would leave.

Todd Liles: Roy, I’ve ran thousands upon thousands of calls actually as a service tech and as an overseeing people in the field. And I had that person once. And yes, it absolutely sucked. I even went out there as a favor to the guy’s mom.

Roy Williams: Wow.

Todd Liles: And then he had the fortitude to look it up on his phone while I stood right there in front of him. It’s like, I got what his issue was. He was a kid that had a home he couldn’t afford. And I was basically a free diagnostic or a cheap diagnostic because I charged him for the dispatch. It’s like, okay, no big deal. That’s fine. Look, I agree with you, we don’t want that customer. But I don’t think that renaming everything is actually for that customer. I think it’s for a different reason.

Roy Williams: Well, again, I think that, again, I think it’s a lot of trouble to go through for not a good enough reason. And so the fact that people think they need to do it, I’m going, eh, it’s a lot of work and your techs aren’t going to feel good about themselves. They’re going to feel they didn’t sign up to be salespeople. They didn’t sign up to be deceptive. They didn’t sign up to have to mask what they’re doing. And it will erode their sense of dignity. It will erode their self-worth. And I’m going, so I’m not going to argue with the fact that people are doing it. I’m going, God, it’s a lot of trouble to go to.

Todd Liles: Yeah.

Roy Williams: And it takes a lot of training and it’s not going to feel good to your techs. And so when you look at the upside of doing it, whatever the upside is, it’s probably not worth the downside. And I’m just going, eh, would I do it? No. But do I have a fundamental, philosophical, deep-rooted sense of outrage? Not at all.

Todd Liles: Well, good.

Roy Williams: Just not at all. It’s like, I think it’s weird you think you need to do that. I don’t think it accomplishes what you think it does. And I think you underestimate what it’s costing you. That’s my position on it.

Todd Liles: I’m with you on that. And I do think there are ways to do it that makes sense when you actually, for the sake of example, and then we’ll get off this topic, if you actually have a package where you really, truly are doing a complete refurbish of a system and you call this a complete system refurbish? To me, that’s like, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. That says a lot of what you’re going to do without every single detail. You’re happy to go over the detail. It’s just when it just sounds so ridiculous and words are chosen intentionally to just mask the work that you’re doing, it’s like, it just doesn’t feel good.

Roy Williams: Well, no. And usually it feels a little bit weird to the customer because there are not that many people that have never heard the word capacitor.

Todd Liles: Sure.

Roy Williams: And it’s like, I mean, I’m as tech ignorant as anybody you’ll ever meet. And my understanding of a capacitor, because the electric motor has to kick that compressor from zero to this super high RPM in like a split second, it needs an extra boost of energy. And so it stores up this big extra kick of energy. It’s like starting fluid on a carburetor on a cold day. Little extra kick of energy to kick that thing off so the car will start. And I’m going, so yeah, so it stores up this juice, it gives the extra jolt. And my understanding is that if you don’t know what you’re doing, a capacitor can kick your ass with a jolt that… Because you didn’t know how to handle it.

Todd Liles: Oh, yeah, it can be absolutely dangerous. Like, I can remember a young technician named Chris who actually wasn’t as skilled as we thought he was, miswired a capacitor. It was a dual run capacitor, which meant that it was giving the boost that was needed to the fan motor and to the compressor. And he actually burnt the fan out. So, yeah, you can cause damage there for sure. All right, Roy, I have an ad segment today that I think is fun. Have you ever seen the Loretta ad segment by Google that they aired at the 2020 Super Bowl? All right, we’ve watched Google ads before. They have this very unique way of storytelling inside of their product. And I just wanted to show you this because I think it’s pretty clever.

 

Hey, Google, show me photos of me and Loretta. [laughter]

Remember Loretta hated my mustache?

Remember Loretta loved going to Alaska and scallops.

Show me photos from our anniversary.

Remember she always snorted when she laughed.

Play our favorite movie.

Remember I’m the luckiest man in the world.

Come on, boy.

Todd Liles: So for the listener that couldn’t see the ad, it was an ad that was released in 2020, really ahead of its time. Because these are things that are really at full force now with AI. And it was an older gentleman. You just saw his photo, but you heard his voice. And we’re assuming based off the photos and the sound of his voice, he’s probably in his 80s, lost his wife, and he’s reminiscing. And they take this very cold, impersonal product, AI, and they’ve done something really smart, which is they’ve tied it to a human emotion and connection. And I wanted to see what you thought about that.

Roy Williams: Okay, well, what you saw was a story, and you experienced it vicariously. You never knew the man’s name. You only knew that his wife was named Loretta. And you see them at a young age. You see these very genuine photographs of an obvious couple that they found. They found some, a really great couple that had lived a long time together and had some amazing photographs, and they looked like real, authentic photographs. And some of ’em are dog-eared and worn. And it’s like, okay, this rings true, right? And his voice rings true.

And the pathos, the reminiscence, the longing were all there. And so you feel those things because you’re watching him feel those. You’re not watching him. You’re seeing photos. You never see the man. You never see him current, the man who’s speaking now. You don’t see him, you only hear him, but you see the photos of who he was, who he used to be. And so you internalize that. It’s on the visuospatial sketchpad. That’s the fancy scientific name for the mind’s eye, the movie screen of the mind, the visuospatial sketchpad of working memory in the dorsolateral prefrontal association area of your brain.

And that’s where you’re seeing this movie and you are feeling his feelings and you get choked up. And it’s because that’s how humans are wired. We are wired for connection, and we connect through shared experiences. They shared an experience and they did it artfully. And we felt what they wanted us to feel, and we felt better about Google.

Todd Liles: You know, Roy, every time I see a really smart marketing campaign or really smart ad, it just makes me go, someone came up with this version of AI that they saw for the future a long time ago, said, this is where we’re going. And some marketing person saw that and said, yeah, that’s great, but you can’t sell it the way you’re trying to sell it, because humans aren’t going to buy that. They’re going to think that’s creepy. But what if it wasn’t creepy? What if it told a personal connecting story and helped an older person improve their life and remember the things that were important to them?

And what I take away from items like that is what our partners at The Wizard of Ads group can do. Because I’ve often found myself going, how are we going to tell a story about air conditioning that can connect as a human? Because we’re out here replacing air conditioners and we’re doing plumbing. And more than that, there’s much more than home services. And a great partner can go, ah, here’s the story behind that. Here’s the human connection, here’s the beauty. This is what we’re going to unpack.This is what we’re going to unfold. It’s not going to be about home services. It’s going to be about this.

Roy Williams: Everything comes down to the angle of entry. So when you enter the subject matter, from what angle will you come? The angle of the technician, the angle of the homeowner, the angle of the omniscient observer? What moment will the story begin? What will be left out and what will be the closing moment? And so how to open, how to end and what to leave out, those are the choices. And so how does this open?

And so when you begin by saying, okay, tell me about your business, what makes you different and special and better? Ooh. And then, well, here’s who we are, and here’s who our target customer is, and this is what we do, and this is why we’re special, and this is why we’re better than everybody else, okay. If you start there, you are going to have horrible ads. And that is the way everybody’s taught to start, okay? The simple fact is, if you start with that frame of reference, there’s only two or three and at the very most, four possible ways to begin an ad when you begin with the premise, here’s who we are, and here’s why we’re different, and here’s why we’re special.

And so that’s when you’re on the inside looking out. The inside looking out is like, hey, here’s a quarter. Find an old payphone, call your mom. Maybe she cares. Nobody else cares about how you think about yourself, okay? You can reveal it the way they did in that wonderful ad from Google. And when you come from an unexpected angle, then people go, I’m not sure where this is headed, but then they get sucked into it. And then you begin to reveal the things so that it kind of starts making sense little by little. And now they are on the journey with you. You’re not talking at them. You are causing them to figure things out on their own. And so now it’s an actual journey that the reader, the listener, the viewer, the customer is on with you.

But you can never have an unpredictable story if you begin from a predictable spot. And so everybody wants to begin from a predictable spot. And I’m going, all of those ads sound alike. All those ads sound like ads, and nobody likes them except the business owner because he thinks people care. And I’m going, they don’t. And so whenever you said, it’s not about you, it’s about the customer, you got to talk to the customer in the language of the customer about what the customer already cares about. And then when you do that, it works out well.

But coming at the subject matter from a very different perspective, a very different angle of view, a very different point of entry into the topic, that is what separates people who do this all day, every day, for a living, for years from the average happy homeowner who just does what’s obvious. And it’s like, yep, that just doesn’t work out as well as you think. It does take writers, it does take professional crafters of stories to find out, what elements do you have? What pieces do you have in the pantry that we can create stories out of? And that’s when you take ’em to a three-hour lunch and pour a lot of wine and get ’em talking.

Todd Liles: Love it.

Roy Williams: And when people think right now we’re just chilling. Right now we’re just relaxing. That’s when you actually get the stuff you need. And even when I explain that that’s what we do, it still works.

Todd Liles: Absolutely.

Roy Williams: Because across the table, when food’s in between you, the conversation changes. And you can get people to start telling you things and you can tell them things, and then the conversation flows. And then you forget we’re here to make ads. And that’s when, Todd, I’m telling you, that is when you find the gold 100% of the time.

Todd Liles: Love it. All right, listen up, listeners. You are running a business now, and chances are very good that if you’re listening to this, your business has crossed over 3 million. It may be even into 5, and you have visions of growing it to like 20. At this stage, you’re not actually running a shop anymore. You’re running a brand. There are very important things that need to be in place in your business. And if you are listening and you’re going Roy and Todd know what they’re talking about, then what I encourage you to do is connect with us. You can reach out here at the website. You can go to toddliles.com. We will answer your emails. And until next time, I think this has been an amazing Todd Liles and The Wizard of Ads. I hope you think so as well. So if you do, subscribe and share it with a friend.

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