David Young | Branding Blog - Marketing Advice and Advertising Strategy for Local Business Owners

Counter Branding

[Today's memo from Roy H. Williams focuses on counter-branding. I'd encourage you to visit the example company's website to see how it's done. -dave ]

When your business category is dominated by a single brand and all the other brands put together don't equal them, it's time to create a counter-brand.

Counter-branding – business judo – is rare and dangerous. But when you're overwhelmingly dominated, what have you got to lose?

Prior to the creation of their "Uncola" counter-brand in 1967, 7-Up had survived for 38 years as a lemon-lime soft drink with the slogan, "You Like It. It Likes You."

Yippee Skippy call the press, a soft drink likes me.

Advertising, Like Reduction Sauce

[Note from Dave:  I was once participating in an on-line discussion with some academicians who could only speak in lengthy prose "informed" by whatever "informs" them. I was accused of being glib. Honestly, I had to look it up. I smiled and never rejoined their discussion. Some may mourn the trend that Roy is discussing today. I'm ready for it!]

By Roy H. Williams

Hi Roy,

Thanks for the mention in the MMM today. It never ceases to amaze me the buzz something like that creates.

Reading it also reminds me of the other conversation that took place at the same time, when you and Dave were talking about how a chef reduces the sauce to intensify the flavour and how that process can be related to writing. That conversation adds clarity to today's argument raging in the US about 60's vs. 30's.

Cheers

Steve

The "other conversation" mentioned in this email from my partner Steve Rae was with Dave Martin, the Academy graduate and friend in whose restaurant we were dining. Following my discussion of paint with Bob Shrubsall, Dave and I began discussing how impact grows when it's concentrated into less of the carrier vehicle. This is the secret of perfume, reduction sauce, and the edge of an axe. But just as sharpening an axe or simmering the water from sauce takes time and patience, editing words from descriptions is not a task for the anxious or twitchy.

Easy reading is damned hard writing.

Think of this principle as The Law of Refined Essence.

I've always been a fan of David Ogilvy and J. Peterman, two of the great masters of evocative description, and both were advocates of long and colorful copy. These men were legends in their day but I believe that day is fading. The rules of communication are shifting beneath our feet.

Haven't you noticed?

We're entering an era of stimuli bombardment, visual ecstasy, sound bites, the micro attention span. A committed reader is a rare bird.

Over-communication has accelerated beyond critical mass and the resulting explosion has fragmented the public mind.

So the new rule is to say what you've got to say. And say it hot.

Speaking to authors, Elizabeth Spencer said, "Don't overwrite description in a story - you haven't got time." I believe her advice rings truer today than ever.

What do you believe?

Roy H. Williams

PS - Have you seen the latest photos of the new Academy campus? We're doing our best to update them at least every week. Just click PHOTOS at the top of the homepage at www.WizardAcademy.com.

Advertising, Like Paint

[Let me say: This is exactly the type of memo from Roy that I love. It mixes religion, politics, war and paint. You try that sometime. You've got to be about as crazy/genius as Tom Robbins to pull it off.]

Today's Memo from Roy H. Williams

“The thing that has been will be again.” And other 8-Word Answers.

People who try to stay "on the cutting edge" tend to see everything as new. But the thing that has been will be again. And that which currently is, has been, long before our time.

If this observation seems familiar to you, it's probably because you remember it from a book written a few thousand years ago. Solomon went looking for the meaning of life and the essay he wrote about his journey, Ecclesiastes, opens with a similar observation about the cyclical nature of things.

I call such observations Laws of the Universe and I depend on them to make my clients rich. Sounds like a book title, doesn't it? The Wizard's Laws of the Universe? Perhaps I'll write it someday.

Right now I'm looking at a business card I've been carrying in my wallet since late autumn, 2000; Pennie and I were in...

[Continue reading today's memo on Roy's site]

Where have your fingers been walking lately?

[Note from Dave: I've read somewhere that much of the space in our landfills is taken up with phonebooks. Perhaps the best thing for the environment would be for this form of advertising to die a quick death.]

Here's today's memo from Roy H. Williams:

A few years ago, your customer could compare you only to your competitor down the street. But information gathering and comparison shopping have since become effortless, thanks to the internet. Tens of millions of us are gathering and comparing info 24/7 in the comfort and seclusion of our own homes.

But we're not "your customer," right?

I recently spoke to an audience of 1600 businesspeople at a conference in Las Vegas. Just before I walked onstage into the spotlight, my host whispered into my ear, "It would probably be better if you didn't make any references to the internet, because this audience is almost exclusively 55 and older." I smiled and nodded at him just as the man at the microphone said "Roy H. Williams" and I walked out from behind the curtain to meet my fate.

Taking center stage, I raised my hand and asked, "How many of you have used a search engine in the last 7 days to research a purchase that you were considering?" At least 90 percent of the hands in the room were instantly raised. I looked offstage and shot a smile to my host who was staring bug-eyed at the ocean of fingers.

But I suppose none of those.....(continue reading at WizardAcademy)

Pattern Recognition

Today's MMMemo from Roy H. Williams sparked an hour-long chase through the Nobel Prize lecture site. Aroo!

After reading the Richard Sperry reference, I decided to read Kerry Mullis' remarks following his Prize for inventing the Polymerase Chain Reaction in 1993. What a great read.

The exciting thing is that Mullis is a graduate of the Magical Worlds and stays in close contact with Roy. Wait until you hear about what Kerry's working on right now. It'll make the PCR look like tinker toys. You won't hear about it from me. You'll read about it on the front page of every newspaper and website and network in about a year.

Now, on to the MMMemo. More insight on how the brain works. The interesting thing is that Roy doesn't quote the marketing folks, he quotes the Nobel Prize winners.  Enjoy.

By Roy H. Williams

"And all shall be well and All manner of thing shall be well When the tongues of flame are in-folded Into the crowned knot of fire And the fire and the rose are one." In this strange passage from Little Gidding, poet T.S. Eliot links the mental image of a rose to the image of an infolded knot of flame. We see the connection; yes, a rose does look something like a knot of fire.

Much has been written about intuition and creativity. Most of it is wrong.

Continue reading Monday Morning Memo for February 28, 2005

PS...If you decide to attend the Magical Worlds workshop because you first read about it here, drop me a note. I'm always interested in learning more about like-minded readers of my blog. Have a super week!

Confidence - Where to Get it and How to Keep it

By Roy H. Williams

Getting confidence and keeping confidence – emotional muscle – is like getting and keeping any other muscle; it just requires daily exercise.

But where does confidence come from? Is it merely a feeling – the product of an optimistic attitude gained through positive thinking rituals learned at motivational seminars – or is it something more substantial?

According to Baltasar Gracian, confidence comes from authority, "…and the highest authority is that which rests on an adequate knowledge of things and long experience in different occupations. Master the subject matter and you will come and go with grace and ease and speak with the force of a teacher; for it is easy to master one's listeners if one first masters knowledge. No sort of abstract speculation can give you this authority; only continual practice in one occupation or another. Mastery arrives from an action done often and well... Authority originates in nature and is perfected by art. Those who attain this quality find things already done for them. Superiority itself lends them ease and nothing holds them back: they shine, both in words and deeds, in every situation. Even mediocrity, helped out by authority, has a certain eminence, and a little showiness can make everything come out right."

Keys to confidence:

1. Do your homework....

Link: Monday Morning Memo for February 21, 2005

Your Life is a Journey

But where is it taking you?

By Roy H. Williams

You had friends and laughter, adventure and romance. Remember the halcyon days of your youth? But then the friends went away, the laughter faded, the adventure ended and the romance was over.

It was time to go to work.

Do you ever feel like you're wearing ankle irons, condemned to row forever with the other galley slaves in the dim life below ship's deck? "I too have had my dreams: ay, known indeed the crowded visions of a fiery youth which haunt me still." - Oscar Wilde

One of the happy accidents of Wizard Academy is that students often rediscover who they were when they were young. They come to the academy to become better salespeople and scientists, journalists and educators, authors and ministers, business people and bar bouncers, ad writers and artists and we certainly make them those things. But somewhere along the way, students remember how to love their lives again and the dream-seed that fell into the ground during the dark days of winter breaks through the warm soil of spring to shout its message to the sky.

"Work is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying." - Studs Terkel

I want you to come to Austin on April 23. It's a Saturday. Tuscan Hall, our auditorium, is now complete except for the flagstone plaza and water features that will surround it and we'll certainly have those done before you get here. Likewise, construction is ahead of schedule for the April 23 opening of Chapel Dulcinea, the small, cliff's-edge structure that symbolizes the academy's heart and provides the fuel for its dreams.

What are the dreams of Wizard Academy? To build a school of discovery in the arts and sciences: in short, the Harvard of a brighter tomorrow. Our students, partners, and adjunct faculty are already changing the world of business through more persuasive ad writing, ‘New School' sales training, and revolutionary internet solutions. Additionally, my partner Sonja Howle will soon be taking the reigns of our Art Marketing Workshop to help artists in every discipline – all over the world – make a better living from their work because we are convinced their work is essential. We'll soon be adding a new course in visionary architecture taught by one of America's greatest living architects who, miraculously, has agreed to participate in our April 23 event to explain in detail all the symbolism and feeling that is woven into the very architecture of the school. Prepare to be amazed.

Now I need you to take a slow breath and sit down, okay? Because I'm getting ready to share with you a part of the dream that could easily sound delusional: It is our conviction that this school will exist and thrive for at least 500 years. That's why we've been careful to use only such construction materials and techniques that will withstand the wear of centuries.

Every organization closely tied to the identity of its founder dies shortly after its founder's passing. We don't want that to happen. That's why the academy is now a non-profit organization governed by a board of directors beyond my control. It must become independent of me long before I'm gone. I will not build a monument to myself. Look closely at any of my bestselling Wizard of Ads books and you'll see that my name isn't on the cover of any of them. This was my choice. My plan from the beginning has been only to kick open closed doors and point toward the horizon for an army of world-changers who will follow. Will you be counted among them?

The Academy's students, faculty and directors want the school's powerful, inside-out way of thinking to be passed like a torch from generation to generation, providing the fuel, the research and the inspiration to create constant improvement forever in every field of endeavor. And they're doing everything it takes to make sure it happens.

Are we crazy? Maybe.

Come be crazy with us.

Roy H. Williams

PS - An unrelated note for future discussion when next we're together around the campfire: I spent some time last week with Mark Sanford, Governor of South Carolina. I knew nothing about the man before we sat down together, but having gotten to know him, I've found myself hoping that he someday runs for president. - RHW

© Copyright 2004 Wizard Academy^® - All Rights Reserved

Climbing the Hill Too High

By Roy H. Williams

Niche marketing was born the day a clear-eyed realist chose to dominate a subcategory when the master category seemed too high a hill to climb. "Instead of trying to become a major retailer of home furniture, I'll become the king of affordable dinettes. Instead of making a run at used cars, I'll dominate used Corvettes instead."

Focused specialization makes sense, and in some circumstances it's exactly the right thing to do. But beware the temptation to think too small. Climbing molehills is easy. And when the time comes to plant your flag on top, you'll find there's already a convenient hole in it for you. Long live the king.

But then what have you really got?

Early in my consulting career most of my advice centered around the idea of focusing on a niche, a subcategory, a genre. My first client was a jeweler who deeply loved rubies, emeralds, sapphires, tourmalines, kunzites, garnets and all manner of colored gemstones. Even better, he was a nationally recognized expert on them. So what better strategy could I recommend than suggest that his store specialize in colored gems? Thank God he didn't agree to it. If Woody Justice had taken my advice that day, he would have quickly become King of a Molehill instead of spending a delightful two decades becoming something much bigger than either of us dared dream.

Sad it is to live your whole life without ever having a dream, a hope, a goal. Sadder still is to have a goal, but never achieve it. But saddest of all is to have a goal, achieve it, and then have nothing to do.

I'm not being poetic or playing with double meanings. I mean exactly what I said. But I'm not the first, John Steinbeck said it this way: "In the dark the other night I wrote in my head a whole dialogue between St. George and the Dragon. Very close relatives those two. They are eternally tied together - actually two parts of one whole... So St. George must always kill the dragon and it must be repeated because if the dragon were finally killed, there would be no St. George - only a lonely man looking for something to do."

In the year 410, the man in North Africa who would be remembered as St. Augustine of Hippo wrote, "Why does it say in the holy Psalm, ‘The hearts of them shall rejoice that seek the Lord, that seek His face forever?' Why does it not say, ‘The hearts of them shall rejoice that find the Lord?'" Augustine ponders this awhile, then offers us his conclusion: "Things incomprehensible must be so investigated." In other words, Augustine believed we are magnetically drawn and thrilled by what is too big for us. It makes our hearts rejoice.

I think I agree. And that's why next week I'm going to share with you a dream too big for me alone. Heck, maybe it's too big for all of us together. But it makes my heart rejoice and it may do the same for you.

We'll see.

Roy H. Williams

P.S. You'll find the Augustine passage in his On The Trinity, book 15, chapter 2.

© Copyright 2004 Wizard Academy^® - All Rights Reserved

Voices of Dissent

By Roy H. Williams

I was writing an upbeat and instructional memo to send you today called Confidence: Where to Get It and How to Keep It. But it's going to have to wait. This other thing just wouldn't turn me loose until I wrote it down and sent it to you.

Have you ever had a concept slap you in the face with every twist of your consciousness? The slap-fest began for me on Friday, when my chief media buyer asked to have a long discussion with me about television. Juan Guillermo Tornoe rarely requests my time. We had a long heart-to-heart about TV ads and then went home for the weekend.

Upon checking my email that evening I learned that FCC chairman Michael Powell - the man who had tried to deregulate TV and radio so that a tiny handful of people could control what we see and hear - had finally stepped down. I slept a little more peacefully that night.

I awoke the next morning, hopped into my truck to run some errands and stuck a new CD into the player, having no idea what to expect. I'd not heard of the group Green Day, but bought the CD impulsively when Amazon.com had suggested it. I had no idea what sort of music to expect. Here are the lyrics to the first song:

"Don't wanna be an American idiot.
One nation controlled by the media.
Information age of hysteria.
It's calling out to idiot America…"

Again the pervasiveness of TV had popped up like a prairie dog the moment I lifted my glance to the horizon.

Upon my arrival home the rotating quote that greeted me when I logged on to WizardAcademy.com was, "All television is educational television. The question is what is it teaching?" - Nicholas Johnson

More than 700 rotating quotes and that's the one I get. Hmm...

Just then Pennie, having no idea how often I'd already been confronted with the idea of television's pervasive place in our lives, hung up the phone and mentioned that her sister called to say she felt Dr. James Dobson had finally stepped over the line into the land of the paranoid with his accusation that TV's SpongeBob Squarepants is teaching young children to be homosexuals.

I wasn't much interested in the squabble between JamesDob and SpongeBob. The thing that snagged my attention is that Pennie and her sister had been discussing a TV newscast that reported what a media minister had said another TV show might be doing to children.

The next morning Pennie handed me the newspaper's Parade insert because the cover story was an article by literary giant Norman Mailer. I don't ever read the paper, so when the Princess finds something in it she thinks I might want to see, she saves it for me. You guessed it. The great Norman Mailer was railing against TV. "If the desire to read diminishes, so does one's ability to read. The search for a culprit does not have to go far… If we want to have the best of all possible worlds, I believe that television commercials have got to go. The constant interruption of concentration of TV advertising not only dominates much of our lives, but over the long run is bound to bleed into our prosperity… Let us pay directly for what we enjoy on television rather than pass the spiritual cost on to our children and their children."

Halfway through Mailer's rant my email dinged for my attention. It was a note from a friend I'd not heard from in awhile. There's no way Dan knew what I was pondering. I swear I'm not making any of this up. Here's his email:

"Two years ago I watched my last local TV newscast. I was fed up with hearing about murder after murder. I was beginning to believe, as many viewers must, that our society was out of control, with everyone shooting everyone on every street corner. It's not true. Not even close. I feel better about my country since I turned off the local news, which is really "crime news." You know. . . "if it bleeds, it leads." But, sadly, a lot of people seem to accept the idea that being informed about a murder across town is relevant and somehow important to know. It's not. It's mind poison." - Excerpt from RV Travel, Issue 144, EDITOR'S CORNER by Chuck Woodbury

What do all these disjointed thoughts add up to? Only this: television's magnetic hold on us seems to be on the mind of a lot of people right now. And I, for one, am going to ponder this awhile and come to some sort of conclusion. And then I'll probably take some sort of action. What it will be, I have no idea.

There's room in this think-tank for you, too, if you want jump in.

See you in the deep end.

Yours,

Roy H. Williams

© Copyright 2004 Wizard Academy^® - All Rights Reserved

The Gift of 500 Years

By Roy H. Williams

It was Christmas Eve, 1513. In just two more years, 78 year-old architect Giovanni Giocondo would be dead, having filled Europe with magnificent buildings and bridges that continue to stand unweathered in the year 2005. During that night he wrote a note to his friend, Allagia Aldobrandeschi. The note, like his other work, remains:

I am your friend and my love for you goes deep. There is nothing I can give you which you have not got, but there is much, very much, that, while I cannot give it, you can take.

No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in today. Take heaven!

No peace lies in the future that is not hidden in this present little instant. Take peace!

The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach is joy. There is radiance and glory in the darkness could we but see - and to see we have only to look. I beseech you to look!

Life is so generous a giver, but we, judging its gifts by the covering, cast them away as ugly, or heavy or hard. Welcome it, grasp it, touch the angel's hand that brings it to you. Everything we call a trial, a sorrow, or a duty, believe me, that angel's hand is there, the gift is there, and the wonder of an overshadowing presence.

Life is so full of meaning and purpose, so full of beauty - beneath its covering - that you will find earth but cloaks your heaven.

Courage, then, to claim it, that is all. But courage you have, and the knowledge that we are all pilgrims together, wending through unknown country, home.

And so, at this time, I greet you. Not quite as the world sends greetings, but with profound esteem and with the prayer that for you now and forever, the day breaks, and the shadows flee away.

I send you these thoughts today because my own mind is cloudy and damp and I need to shout some sunshine in. I've been crowded upon by too many fast people in wraparound sunglasses and leather pants, each of them with a crocodile smile and a toothy proposal they assured me would be "mutually beneficial." It took me long to make them go away.

Like Giocondo, I want to build things that will stand the test of time. Businesses for my clients and their families. An academy of higher learning for the world. A true and lasting friendship with you, even though we may never meet except through these brief notes on Monday mornings.

Thank you for spending these minutes. My greatest wish is for you to have the strength to lay your hand upon those things Giocondo urged Aldobrandeschi to take.

Yours,

Roy H. Williams

PS – Special thanks to my consigliere Richard Grosbard, who somehow knows when to call and what to say. (If this name seems familiar to you, it may be because you remember Richard from the dedication page of the book, Accidental Magic.)