Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

I promise that I will state plainly for you – in ten short words – the singular Rule of Success before you have finished reading this Monday Morning Memo.Stay quiet and stay close. We are wandering into a dangerous area. To see the glittering truth of the Rule of Success, we must quietly sneak up on it.The North Star never moves because it hovers directly above the axis of the earth. If you draw a line from the South Pole to the North Pole and then extend that line 323 light years into space, it will touch the North Star.Your life’s goal is your guiding light, your North Star. This is why you are forever traveling northward as you pursue your dream.But there is a limit to north. That limit is called the North Pole.When you go beyond that limit, you are now headed in the opposite direction.This is the bitter truth that has been tasted by every person who has achieved their life’s goal:“You work your whole life to reach the summit. And when you get there, all the roads lead down.”Like every rule, North and South are finite and achievable.Like every principle, East and West are infinite and unachievable.You can travel east forever and never reach the end of “east.”“The opposite of a correct statement is an incorrect statement. But the opposite of a profound truth is often another profound truth.”Without intending to do so, Niels Bohr summarized in those two sentences the fundamental difference between a rule and a principle. The first sentence describes every rule. The second sentence describes every principle.The person who turns a principle into a rule is a fool.I call that person a fool only because their mind is not big enough to hold in stasis the contradictory tension that is at the heart of every profound truth.Did it ever occur to you that helping people get what they want is the foundational principle behind every business on earth?Do you want to be successful?This the only Rule of Success:“Find out what people want, then give it to them.”Jesus taught us the eternal principle behind the Rule of Success when he said,“Love your neighbor as yourself.”Remove “Love” from that principle, and you will have a similar principle that says,“It is always good to help people get what they want.”But here is the “opposite truth” of that principle:“It is always bad to help people get what they want when it would require injuring an innocent person.”In other words, removing “love” wasn’t such a great idea.People who worship at the altar of Ayn Rand always try to convince me that it is okay to damage naive, gullible, innocent people “because the only person that really matters is you, and you are not responsible for making other people happy. You are only responsible for making yourself happy.”Interestingly, that is exactly what Jeffrey Epstein believed.He died in prison for his belief, and his name has become a curse word.Bernie Madoff was only pretending to help people get what they wanted. He was perceived as “successful” for as long as he was able to sustain his con.Bernie likewise died in prison.Sam Bankman-Fried was a young fool who pretended to be helping people while he was robbing them blind.The courts took away the 11 billion dollars he stole. Then they locked him in a room the size of a walk-in closet where he will spend the next 25 years of his life.Removing love is never a good idea.– Roy H. Williams

Effective advertising is not about delivering information; it is about delivering persuasion.Don’t tell your audience how to feel.Make them feel.Great ad writers are secret poets.Poetry is not about making words rhyme. Poetry is about leading people to a realization.Poetic ad writers open your eyes and cause you to realize.They lead you to a conclusion, then let you discover it for yourself.Great writers don’t tell you. They show you.This poem will do that:What of the watchman on the wall?What says the watchman?“It is 10pm, let the night begin.”What says the watchman?“It is 11 at night, everything is all right.”What says the watchman?“It is midnight, the bell has rung. Every song has been sung.”What says the watchman?“It it is 1am, I am all alone. I am all alone.”What says the watchman?“It is 2am, scrolling on my phone.”What says the watchman?What says the watchman?What says the watchman?What says the watchman?The watchman watched his phone.The enemy arrived.The watchman is gone.Don’t just deliver information. Deliver persuasion.Open their eyes. Make them realize.When they see what you see, they will do what you want them to.Win the heart and the mind will follow.The mind will always create logic to justify what the heart has already decided.Roy H. WilliamsCheryl Strauss Einhorn helps executives, entrepreneurs, and leadership teams make smarter, more confident choices and avoid costly mistakes. As a Decision Science strategist, Cheryl developed the widely used AREA Method, a framework designed to help leaders challenge assumptions, reduce cognitive bias, and improve judgment in high-stakes situations.In this week’s episode of Monday Morning Radio, Cheryl explains to roving reporter Rotbart that while “gut instinct” plays a valuable role in business, too many leaders rely on it entirely, rather than grounding their decisions in real-world testing, stakeholder input, rigorous analysis, and evidence. Listen and learn at MondayMorningRadio.com

Find out what people already want, then offer them exactly that. Quit trying to convince customers that they should want what you are selling.Speak to everyone, everywhere, about widely felt needs, deeply held beliefs, and personal values. Quit telling yourself that you need to reach “the right people” with your advertising.A: The media doesn’t make the message work. The message makes the media work. I’ve never seen a business fail because they were were reaching the wrong people. But I’ve seen hundreds fail because they were saying the wrong things.B: Anyone who has a friend, a relative, a co-worker, or a neighbor is an influencer. Is there anyone that you DON’T want to say good things about you?C: Powerful brands like Ferrari, Rolex, and Harley Davidson are known, loved, and admired by hundreds of millions of people who will never own a Ferrari, a Rolex, or a Harley. Do you think those brands would be better off if they were known only to the people that the brands chose to “target” as potential customers?Customers buy from personalities they know, like, and trust.A: People don’t bond with corporations, they bond with personalities.B: Brands that have personalities are exactly as real to us as our favorite characters in novels, television shows, cartoons, and movies. Who doesn’t love R2D2, C3PO, and Yoda? You realize those characters are purely imaginary, right? But we feel as though we know them.C: Does your brand have a distinctive personality? If not, why not?I will now summarize each of those 3 Steps in exactly 12 words.People want friends, honesty, encouragement, access, and to know that they matter.Buy mass media. Quit fishing with a hook. Use a net instead.Don’t be so boring. Find some courage. Be a distinctively memorable personality.Roy H. WilliamsZig Ziglar would have turned 100 this year.This week, Tom Ziglar shares some little-known stories about his father with roving reporter Rotbart and deputy rover, Maxwell, including the fact that despite Zig’s worldwide fame, he once carried a stranger’s luggage to the guest’s hotel room simply because the out-of-towner took one look at Zig’s red sports coat and thought he was a bellman.But todays episode is more than a nostalgic look backward, as Tom Ziglar offers a thoughtful meditation on legacy, leadership, and the enduring power of optimism. Things are looking UP at MondayMorningRadio.com.

I write this with reluctance because I know that I will receive hundreds of emails correcting me on a few niggling little details.But write on, I must.“Write on, write on, write on.”“Cost of Compute” refers to the $8 to $13 that every AI company has to spend on electricity and short-lived computer chips for every $1 that comes through the door.Losing a dozen dollars for every dollar you touch isn’t a problem when investors are showering you with cash from a fire hose.But it’s beginning to look like the well has run dry.I did not want to defend where I got my information, so I went to the Goog and asked, “Oh Great Googness, why are people referring to the S&P 500 as the “S&P 10”?Check this out, cub scout, straight from the AI of the Almighty Google:“The S&P 500 is being referred to as the “S&P 10″ because a handful of massive technology-related companies dominate the index’s performance. Due to market-cap weighting, these top 10 stocks disproportionately influence the index’s total return, making the ‘broad market’ performance heavily reliant on these few, AI-exposed companies. More than $40 of every $100 invested in the S&P 500 is going into just 10 companies, creating a high level of concentration not seen in decades. In some recent periods, those top 10 stocks have accounted for nearly 90% of the entire index’s gains, indicating that the remaining 490+ stocks contribute very little to the overall upward movement.”Allow me to highlight Three Big Problems.Manufacturing companies, food companies, service companies, and all the other cash-hungry hopefuls that are the true wonders of the American economy have not been able to raise any money because way too many people have been dumping everything they’ve got into AI.That money has now slowed down, which means that a lot of AI dependent companies are now being burned by their “burn rate,” a slang term for “precisely how fast they are losing money.”AI is getting worse, not better, despite the fact that everyone is repeating like parrots, “AI is worse now than it will ever be. Hour by hour, AI will just keep getting better and better forever and ever.”Okay, I can tell from the look of doubt that I see in your eyes that you need me to explain a little bit more about Problem Number 3.They can’t raise prices fast enough to stop the bleeding, so most of the AI companies have reduced their Cost of Compute by 86%.“But how?” you ask.Here’s how. In the recent past, you could give your $200/mo AI some detailed instructions and it would go on a deep dive to bring you the golden nuggets of information that you requested. The 86% savings of Compute Cost is because they instructed the AI to just look in the cache for what they told someone else who asked a similar question. You get a recycled answer, and the AI company saves 86%.I’ll wrap this up by giving you the storyteller’s definition of “inflection point.”Bad storytellers say, “This happened, then This happened, then This happened, then This happened, then This happened.”Real stories happen like this: “This happened, THEREFORE this happened, BUT then, This happened.”“BUT then, This happened” is called “an Inflection Point.”“So what’s going to happen next?”Let’s wait and see.Roy H. Williams

I could be wrong, but I think I see a line of 6,603 standing dominoes with a forefinger poised to flick the first domino.Take a step back, I’ll give you some facts, and then we’ll return to the dominoes.There are 6,602 FM radio stations in America, 597 FM stations in Canada, and 234 in Australia on which you can air radio ads for local businesses. These radio stations are producing miraculous results for business owners who hire great ad writers to enchant the audience and savvy media buyers to schedule those ads to air with correct repetition 52 weeks a year.Sadly, most business owners do exactly the wrong thing. They run short schedules to “test the waters,” and then announce, “I tried radio and it didn’t work.”ABC, NBC, CBS, and FOX are producing miraculous results for business owners who hire great ad writers to enchant the audience and savvy media buyers to schedule those ads to air with correct repetition 52 weeks a year.Sadly, most business owners do exactly the wrong thing. They run short schedules to “test the waters,” and then announce, “I tried television and TV didn’t work.”Did you notice the similarity that united those two easily proven facts?Anyone who believes that online media has made mass media obsolete is comically delusional. I never waste time attempting to correct these people.We will now return to the dominoes.Nielsen Audio is the media measurement company that allows savvy media buyers to create miraculous radio schedules. Without Nielsen, they are flying blind without instruments and very likely to crash their flying machines.Cumulus owns multiple radio stations in 84 important cities in the U.S. Their current financial difficulties make it impossible for them to pay Nielsen for their measurement services.Nielsen has responded by announcing that Cumulus radio stations will no longer be measured or listed in future ratings reports.The resulting invisibility of those stations will cripple even the savviest media buyers.An emerging measurement system, DTS AutoStage, shows promise but I remain convinced that it will be at least a few more years before it has sufficient breadth of data to replace Nielsen.The finger of Nielsen is flicking the domino that will knock over the other 6,602 dominoes in the chain that will ultimately result in the demise of Nielsen.I have no way of knowing whether or not Nielsen realizes that.Nielsen was purchased by private equity on October 11, 2022, less than 4 years ago.Things are looking good for ABC, NBC, CBS, and FOX.Roy H. WilliamsWhen people talk about the Chicago Cubs and their historic 2016 World Series victory — ending a 108-year drought — Joshua Lifrak is a name you rarely hear. But he wears a Cubs World Series ring. Joshua Lifrak’s job was to help players perform under extraordinary pressure. Today Joshua works with business leaders to sharpen focus, build mental resilience and perform at their best. Be fascinated as Joshua tells roving reporter Rotbart and deputy rover Maxwell how peak mental conditioning is a “home run” skill that anyone can learn and practice, regardless of what they do for a living. Batter up! at MondayMorningRadio.com