Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

1. EquityI’m not sure how Google would define “equity,” but my definition of equity is “stored value.”As a homeowner, you understand home equity as the stored value that it offers you.Your equity in your home is a product of all the time, energy, and money that you have put into it, plus the value that has been added by the passage of time.Relational equity is accumulated in the same way.“What have we invested in each other? What have we endured? How many years have we traveled through life together?”Relational equity is why we tolerate annoyances and troubles from the people we love. They have added value to our lives, so they have relational equity in us.Likewise, customer-bonding ads create relational equity between today’s businesses and tomorrow’s customers. They do this by highlighting shared perspectives, beliefs, and values.Customer-bonding ads communicate authenticity, and vulnerability. And they are always there, 52 weeks a year. Authenticity, vulnerability, and the passage of time are not easy to fake or accelerate.Keep those things in mind as you read on.2. AIEighty-seven Wizards of Ads who stay in regular touch with nearly 1,000 businesses are a reliable finger on the pulse of what is happening.This is what is happening:Google Search results have been altered in a dramatic and unexpected way. Some companies have benefited greatly from Google’s new methodology while other companies have been devastated by it.You’ll understand what separates the winners from the losers in just a moment.With 6,000 employees, Edelman is the world’s largest PR agency. They help companies worldwide manage their reputations and trust through stories published in mass media.Edelman has been doing what they do since 1952.On October 27, 2025, Christmas decorations were vibrating in anticipation of replacing Halloween decor when Brent Nelson – Chief Strategy Officer at Edelman – was quoted in Ad Age magazine.Explaining why Google dramatically expanded their results-ranking criteria, Nelson said,“What drives visibility isn’t your ad budget or keyword bids; it’s earned media. Analysis shows that 90% of what appears in AI summaries is ‘earned-driven’—pulled from reviews, press, blogs, forums and cultural chatter. Paid now plays a different role, amplifying what’s already there.”“The new shelf space isn’t a store; it’s the AI summary. Brands need to understand their earned footprint across AI-generated answers.”“Who gets cited? Who’s trusted? Who’s missing? That’s the new baseline of visibility.”In other words, Google is now rewarding Relational Equity.3. A PredictionHundreds of new companies are about to leap into the Public Relations business. Their goal will be to get their clients mentioned in online press, blogs, forums and cultural chatter.PR is an easy business to get into. It won’t be long before you are approached by someone who has a PR solution to help you improve your AEO (Ask Engine Optimization).If you remember any of today’s Monday Morning Memo, let it be this:“If you don’t have anything interesting to say, don’t let anyone convince you to pay money to say it.”Company slogans, mush-mouth clichés and traditional ad-speak are not going to move the needle.Every month or two, you are going to need something new, exciting, different, and entirely real to say.4. A SuggestionRadio stations would be smart to start a daily or weekly blog that is fun, quick, entertaining, easy-to-read, and full of valuable things that every consumer would want to know about.If I owned a station in Austin, I would call my blog “Cool Things Austin Needs to Know”If my blog was well written and full of actionable information and enough people got into the habit of scanning it each day, my radio station could become an important contributor to the online press, blogs, forums and cultural chatter that are now so very important.Could a Radio station become a major online player in their community? Absolutely!Remember, radio stations have the power to popularize their online blogs FOR FREE. Announcers could quote interesting tidbits from it each day and build a massive readership. Offline radio excitement would become online blog excitement.Do I expect that radio stations will do this? Nope.But if a few do dare to do it, do I expect them to be successful? Nope.These are the four ways that their bosses will force them to screw it up.1. They will try to make it a source of direct revenue.2. They won’t write about anything or anyone who doesn’t advertise on their station.3. They will allow advertisers to influence what is said about them in the blog.4. It will be badly written, boring, and of no value to anyone.But it would absolutely work if they did it right.5. Closing commentsWe are overwhelmed by a Three Ring Circus of media: online, offline, local, national, audio, video, print, outdoor, broadcast, streaming, digital, analog, physical, old-school, new-school, professional, amateur, full-color and black-and-white.It is never the media that makes the message work.It is always the message that makes the media work.If you don’t have anything interesting to say,don’t let anyone convince you to pay money to say it.Roy H. WilliamsLots of people know how to make money. But far fewer understand how to protect it, manage it, and plan for the long arc of life once the hard work of earning is done. Jeffrey Panik brings clarity to complex financial decisions. Listen and learn as Jeffrey shares with roving reporter Rotbart his emphasis on individualized planning, long-term thinking, and his belief that communication is absolutely essential between spouses, across generations, and with trusted advisors.Drawing stories from his professional experience and from his personal history, Jeffrey will shake your beliefs and challenge your assumptions about financial planning and retirement readiness.Jeffrey’s BIG TRUTH can be summarized in just six words: “Clarity today can prevent regret tomorrow.” We’ll say hello and shake your hand the moment you arrive at MondayMorningRadio.com

In 1958, Paul made 85 cents an hour working in a limestone quarry in Oklahoma.He was a man of character, integrity, and kindness.He was quiet, smiled a lot, and was a wonderful listener.Paul’s humility, kindness, and confidence gave him dignity and authority in the eyes of everyone who knew him.He was happily married and had three little girls. On the day his fourth little girl was born he walked into a storm that could easily have ripped him apart.It was with great heaviness of heart that Doctor Franklin told him that there was a problem with the Rh factor in the little girl’s blood and that she was almost certainly going to die.She was barely, barely, barely hanging on.With tears in his eyes Doctor Franklin told him, “And your wife is also fading fast.” Doctor Franklin dropped his chin to his chest as teardrops splashed on his shoes.An ambulance rushed both mother and daughter to a larger hospital in a larger town.Paul was all alone with eighty-five cents an hour and three little girls.Several hours later, a happy and rejoicing Doc Franklin told Paul that both mother and daughter were going to live!They were going to live.The medical bill was more than a thousand dollars and there was no insurance; just a husband and wife and four little girls and 85 cents an hour.Being a man of integrity, Paul went to see Doc Franklin the next day to set up a payment plan for paying that thousand-dollar medical bill.Doc Franklin said, “What medical bill?”Paul was confused, and it showed on his face.Old Doctor Franklin spoke plainly,“There is no medical bill. You do not owe any money. Just be a good father to those girls.”“Just be a good father to those girls.”I can testify that he was a good father to those girls. I met Paul Compton when I was 14 years old and in love with his daughter, the one who nearly died on the day she was born.Here’s how I met him.One week prior to beginning my freshman year in high school, my mother received an invitation to come to an open house at the school on a Tuesday night where she could meet Coach Jerry Meeks, my home room teacher.He taught Oklahoma History, of course.Attached to that letter was a list of all the other students who would be in my first-hour class.I saw that Pennie Compton was going to be in that class with me. She knew who I was, but we had never actually met. This would be the first time that we would be in class together.Mom couldn’t go that night, which suited me fine. I had a plan of my own.I was the first person to arrive. The parking lot was empty except for the cars of the teachers. I met Coach Meeks, then took a seat at a desk in the back row. About 30 minutes later, a tall man came walking in with his wife and the girl that I knew I was going to marry.After Paul and his wife exchanged pleasantries with Coach Meeks, I walked up to him, introduced myself, then shook his hand as I smiled and said,“My name is Roy Williams and you’re going to be seeing a lot of me.”Last week Princess Pennie and I celebrated our 49th wedding anniversary.Paul never criticized me or gave me advice unless I asked for it. But when I did ask for it, he would tell what he thought, along with some true stories from his own life that explained why he believed what he believed.He always spoke slowly and gave me his full attention. His confidence in me was a great encouragement.In all the decades that I knew Paul Compton, I never saw him raise his head from prayer without having tears on his cheeks. When Paul talked to God, you knew that God was listening.I always looked forward to having him pray for me.He was the best man I ever knew.Roy H. WilliamsMonica Ballard knows why marketing campaigns fail. It’s not for lack of clever slogans, talented spokespeople, or catchy jingles. Monica says ad people fail when they try to project “perfection” rather than authenticity, which requires that you acknowledge the struggles and risks inherent in running a business. Monica is a veteran marketing strategist, storyteller, and one of the elite Wizard of Ads partners.Drawing on her background in theater, radio, and live performance, Monica explains to roving reporter Rotbart and deputy rover Maxwell why empathy and emotional honesty create bonds with customers that no discount or gimmick ever could. “Being real isn’t a liability,” Monica assures us. “It is a decisive competitive advantage.” Get Real with Monica Ballard at MondayMorningRadio.com

Extremis is a Latin word that says you are in extreme circumstances, a desperate situation, a dire predicament, or the edge of death.“There is great tension in the world, tension toward a breaking point, and men are unhappy and confused. At such time it seems natural and good to me to ask myself these questions. What do I believe in? What must I fight for and what must I fight against?”I’ll tell you who said that in just a minute.Here’s another direct quote:“It’s life or death for America, people tell you. Angry debates about taxes, religion and race relations inflame the newspapers. Everyone is talking politics: your spouse, your teenage daughter, your boss, your grocer. Neighbors eye you suspiciously, pressing you to buy local. Angry crowds gather, smelling of booze and threatening violence; their leaders wink, confident that the ends justify the means. The stores have sold out of guns.”*Are you ready to hear the final two sentences?“It’s 1775 in Britain’s American colonies. Whose side are you on?”*That first quote about “great tension in the world” and men being “unhappy and confused” came from John Steinbeck in 1941. I’ll bet you thought it was more recent, didn’t you?There is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, “Look! This is something new”? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time. No one remembers the former generations, and even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them.If that sounds familiar to you, it’s because Solomon said it 3,000 years ago in the book of Ecclesiastes.Here’s my point: Yes, the world is in a state of extremis, but we have always been in a state of extremis.So put it behind you. Get over it.Better yet, use your recovery from extremis to unleash joy, passion, a flood of creativity, and a flamelike focus that will take you to places you have never been.When you recover from a state of extremis, you open a trapdoor to the unconscious mind. It is a waterfall that doesn’t fall downward, but gushes upward into the sky.If you want to ride that waterfall, all you have to do is exit your extremis. Put it behind you. Get over it.Quit giving your attention to the news.Do not say to yourself,“But if everyone quit paying attention to the news, there would be no societal outrage, no oversight, no accountability!”Let me make this clear to you. There is zero chance that everyone is going to quit giving their attention to the news. It’s an addiction like any other. In fact, I’m worried that you won’t have the strength, the willpower, or the discipline to turn away from it yourself.If you monitor the news for the rest of your life, what are the chances that doing so will change anything at all, even a tiny bit? Does being aware of things that are beyond your control somehow give you the ability to change those things?Turn away from the dark side, Luke Skywalker. Embrace the light.And have a happy, new, year.Roy H. WilliamsPS – I gathered a few dozen quotes from Dorothy Parker and made two powerful productions from them. The first production is 4 minutes and 24 seconds long and was extracted from writings that Dorothy published in Vanity Fair and The New Yorker in the 1920s.The second production is 5 minutes and 9 seconds and was compiled from the writings of Dorothy’s later years. The character arc between the two performances is sobering. You’ll find both of them on the first page of the rabbit hole. Click the image at the top of the Monday Morning Memo for December 29, 2025, and you’ll be there. – Aroo, Indy Beagle.*Caitlin Fitz, “The Accidental Patriots”, The Atlantic, Dec. 2016Four-time Olympian and bestselling author Ruben Gonzalez joins roving reporter Rotbart today for a conversation about perseverance, belief, and the wisdom of following leaders who have proven themselves to be worthy of your trust. Ruben Gonzalez is unusual among Olympians.He didn’t begin competing at an elite level until his mid-20s, and he never used his lack of natural ability as an excuse for falling short.Ruben’s career in sports and in life has been built upon desire, discipline, and stubbornness. Ruben refuses to quit. His message to you is about how to build your courage through small daily choices, how to manage risk intelligently rather than avoid it, and how to measure your success, not through your bank account, but through the impact you have on others. Meet Ruben Gonzalez and become a happier person at MondayMorningRadio.com.

The best short stories leave out important information but evoke it in such a way as to cause a kind of explosion of associative connections.*These are my secret rules for making that happen:Lead your listener toward a conclusion and then let them arrive at it on their own. If you state a conclusion and then try to support it with evidence, you are robbing your listener of the joy of discovery.Give your listener the new, the surprising, and the different.If you must give them old information, reframe it; give it to them from a new perspective, so that they will see it again for the first time.Leave out the parts that people skip.My Christmas gift to you is The Story of the Universe According to Roy.I call it “Way Back in the Long Ago.” You will find it at TribalGospel.comIt is an auditory opera, a campfire story of God and the Universe told under a starfilled sky by an old man who is accompanied by musicians who sit at the furthest edges of that circle of light.But your seat is closer.You feel the warmth of the fire as it dances the dance of the story, and the stars twinkle their agreement with glittering laughter.This is chapter one.Way back in the long ago, the maker spoke, and light exploded across the darkness. Energy radiated across the nothing.Time and space and order appeared from the nothing of the long ago.Bits of energy shot like shrapnel from a bomb into the grid that was created by the ordering of the nothing. Bits of energy bonded with other bits to become great lumps that went spinning across the grid.Their spinning caused these lumps to become spherical.Some of the spheres were made of gasses; ice giants and dwarfs, gas giants and dwarfs, and suns of every size and temperature were created by the energy within them.Others of those spheres became great rocks.Oxygen bonded to hydrogen so that water splashed in the hollows of those rocks.The maker smiled.Algae and moss and grass and trees emerged, and the maker smiled again.Winged creatures darted through the air and swimming creatures darted through the sea, and the maker smiled again.And then creatures appeared on the rock itself. Creatures appeared on the land.The maker looked at us and decided to make us into little makers with the power to choose whatever we would choose. We have the authority to say “yes,” and the authority to say “no,” as we stare into the eyes of the maker.The maker gave us this watery rock we live upon, and complete authority over it.We have the freedom to be guided by our choices. We are no longer the captives of our instincts.The maker is not held captive by time and space. The maker created time and space from the nothing.It is only we – you and me – who measure time and space.Our history of deciding for ourselves and living with the consequences has not been a good history.Seven billion of us are crammed onto a rock that circles an 11,000-degree fireball as it shoots through the nothing… at 52 times the speed of a rifle bullet.We are passengers on a world spinning out of control.Having wrongly been told that the maker is in control, we blame the maker for every sadness.You can’t have it both ways. You can’t have both free will and a benevolent higher power who protects you from yourself.I hope you will take an hour to enjoy my little campfire opera.Merry Christmas.Roy H. Williams*The same is true of the best jokes and the best ads.This week, roving reporter Rotbart and his deputy, Maxwell, offer their third annual holiday encore of their inspirational Yuletide tale, A Christmas Day Miracle, by Dean and Talya Rotbart. First published in 2021, A Christmas Day Miracle has become a holiday favorite. It is the true story of a man, Riyaz Adat, on death’s doorstep; and his devoted wife, Margaret. The story is a poignant reminder of the wonder and power of life’s unexpected blessings. The telling will begin as soon as you arrive at MondayMorningRadio.com

What? You don’t see the happy times?But they are right there!Right there inside you.Oh, I see. You have something that is keeping you from seeing and feeling and living the sparkling clear and happy times that are struggling to rise up from the depths of your soul.I see that you are worried.That’s the problem.Worry is the cork that keeps the champagne of happiness from spraying a smile on your face and a sparkle in your eye and joy into your heartIf you will allow me, I will try to do for you what Julius Rosenwald and Thomas Jefferson did for me.Julius Rosenwald was an immensely successful businessman who used his money – all of it – to help people rise above their circumstances and experience the wonders of the world in which they lived.This is what Julius Rosenwald wrote to me 100 years ago:“Early in my business career I learned the folly of worrying about anything. I have always worked as hard as I could, but when a thing went wrong and could not be righted, I dismissed it from my mind.”Friend, when a thing goes wrong and cannot be righted, dismiss it from your mind.An army of people surround us whose only job is to make us fearful and afraid. You must not allow these people to capture your attention.Journalists have been shouting deceptive and inflammatory headlines at us since the days of the American Revolution.But the journalists and podcasters of today have discovered new ways of shouting. Emails and websites and Youtube and cable and streaming services promise, pledge and swear to keep us highly informed and deeply unhappy. They feed our worries like stokers feeding firewood into the boilers of steam trains.They want us to ride on their rails of steel so that they can take us where they want us to go.Don’t ride their train. Jump off of it. Thomas Jefferson did.He said,“I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it.”He went on to say,“Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper. The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.”Thomas Jefferson avoided the news and said he was infinitely the happier for it.You should do it, too.Julius Rosenwald and Thomas Jefferson discovered that Jesus was telling the truth in Matthew chapter six when he said,“Do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”Don’t worry.Be happy.Roy H. WilliamsDavid Ackert is making his list and checking it twice — but he’s no Santa Claus. The gifts David brings are powerful insights for professionals who want to grow. David Ackert challenges the long-held belief that success depends on building a massive network of connections. In his view, quantity is a distraction. The thing to do is cultivate a small, curated list of at least 9 not more than 30 “high-value” relationships with people who have the ability to help you reach your goals.Send everyone else a Christmas card.Rotbart goes roving with David Ackert this week, at MondayMorningRadio.com