Touch Points

MMM for JUne 27, 2005 by Roy H. Williams

Our Hurtling World

Marketing was easy in the old days. You had ABC, NBC and CBS, a local newspaper and half a dozen radio stations. That was it. There was no Fox, no WB, no cable channels, no FM radio and no such thing as a cell phone. You had to find a phone booth and a dime. When pay phones jumped to a quarter it was taken as a sign of the antichrist.

I'm talking about the 1970s.

Fax machines and VCRs did not exist for most of us until 1980. It took barely 10 years for them to become utterly indispensable and now they're becoming obsolete, kicked to the curb by email attachments, DVD machines and TiVo.

The future is accelerating toward us. Take your eyes off the hurtling horizon - even for a moment - and the world will pass you by.

It's time for you to get serious about a web site.

Yes, in that list of things that didn't exist in 1980, I failed to mention personal computers, the biggest world-changer of them all.

World-changing, let's talk about it.

Recently, one of our graduates sat down to dinner at the old Clark Gable estate with 4 other World Changers:

1. the president of a major television network
2. a recent candidate for the Presidency of the United States
3. the man whose name is attached to all the most spectacular hotels in Las Vegas
4. a money man whose name you would instantly recognize if I were to say it.
They gathered to discuss a project being headed by my friend. I hope to be able to tell you more about this project soon, as it potentially involves Wizard Academy.

Another of our graduates is directing the worldwide Research and Development efforts of the US government to defeat bio-terrorism. If he is successful, Anthrax, Ebola, SARS, AIDS and other infectious diseases will no longer be life-threatening. Let's pray that he succeeds.

A third graduate is the head of Pentagon News. I'm always fascinated to hear his perspective on world events.

But the graduates whose work is most likely to affect your personal life - the ones who can help you catch up to the future - are the Wizards of Web, Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg.

You know from recent memos that their book Call to Action became an international bestseller. Now, as a special favor to their alma mater, the Eisenbrothers have agreed to teach a world-changing 2-day event – Sept 8 and 9 – as a fundraiser to help build Engelbrecht House, the student mansion soon to be constructed on the campus of Wizard Academy. (No more renting of hotel rooms when you come to Austin!)

You need to attend this event. No other investment will propel you as fast into the future. And at just $2,200 it's the bargain of the century. Academy graduates (and honorary graduates – those who have attended my public seminars) pay only half. Wow. That's only $1,100. Read the details of this one-time-only seminar - Call to Action - under Course Descriptions at WizardAcademy.com.

I wouldn't put it off if I were you.

Roy H. Williams

MMM for June 13, 2005 from Roy H. Williams

Unhappy People

Have you ever noticed how unhappy people always want to share their unhappiness with you? It may come in the form of a whine, a complaint, a rant, or sanctimonious "constructive criticism," but come it most certainly will.

The thing to remember when an unhappy person begins spraying unhappiness is this: It's not really about you. It's about them. And the wounds they carry. So try not to internalize it.

Do you remember the Jewish father played by Roberto Benigni in Life is Beautiful? He illustrated the idea that happiness can be chosen in spite of unhappy circumstances; you are not a product of your environment. You are a product of your choices.

Even weirder than unhappy people wanting to share their unhappiness with you is the fact that happy people generally keep their happiness to themselves. Why are we like this?

I have a theory about leaving tips on tables at restaurants: the size of the tip isn't really an expression of your judgment regarding the quality of service you've received. It's an expression of your generosity, the bigness of your heart. It's not really about the waiter or waitress. It's about you.

This idea can be especially fun when you receive truly abominable service. That's when you can leave a tip that's totally over the top and then smile all the way to your car as you contemplate all the different ways the story might end:

1. The waiter, recognizing the tip as a gesture of love, pulls himself together and has a much-improved day, giving everyone exceptional service. Your ray of sunshine touches 276 lives before it fades into the memory of yesterday.
2. The waiter, misinterpreting the tip as proof that it doesn't really matter whether or not he does a good job, continues his slacker attitude and reaps the life of mediocrity he deserves. But sometimes, late at night, he is haunted by the memory of the strange day he received a 20 dollar tip for serving a 7 dollar sandwich. What was that all about?
3. The waiter, shamed by the monster tip he knows he didn't deserve, assumes it must have been meant for the cook. Your gift has now triggered a crisis of conscience. Will the waiter pass the tip along to the cook and grow as a human being? Or will he "steal" it and forever know himself to be a thief?
4. The waiter, desperately needing the extra cash, accepts the tip as a gift from God. Congratulations, you are now an angel, God's messenger, a finger of His divine hand.
5. The waiter, truly stupid, believes he deserves the tip and pockets it with bravado. Let him have his sad moment of glory. There won't be many like it in his life.

The bottom line is this: People need love. Especially when they do not deserve it. And in the words of Iome Sylvarresta, "Love isn't something you feel. It's something you give."

Do something good today for a person who has done nothing to deserve it. Better yet, do something good for someone you don't even like.

I promise you'll have a better day.

Roy H. Williams

PS - Peter Nevland and Paul Finley have a new flash animated video. Check it out.

MMM for June 6, 2005 by Roy H. Williams

Are You Putting Lipstick on a Pig?

When business is slow, the wise business owner wonders what might be wrong with his business. The average business owner thinks only that something is wrong with his advertising. As I said last week, I believe it was advertising salespeople who taught business owners to think this way, saying, "The secret is to reach the right people. You've obviously been reaching the wrong ones."

But who, exactly, are "the right people" to buy a product no one wants?

David Ogilvy once asked, "Can advertising foist an inferior product on the consumer? Bitter experience has taught me that it cannot. On those rare occasions when I have advertised products which consumer tests have found inferior to other products in the same field, the results have been disastrous."

William Bernbach echoed Ogilvy's statement. "Advertising doesn't create a product advantage. It can only convey it."

But it was Professor Charles Sandage who turned Ogilvy's complaint into a manifesto: "Advertising is criticized on the ground that it can manipulate consumers to follow the will of the advertiser. The weight of evidence denies this ability. Instead, evidence supports the position that advertising, to be successful, must understand or anticipate basic human needs and wants, and interpret available goods and services in terms of their want-satisfying abilities. This is the very opposite of manipulation."

Yet when traffic is slow, the accusing finger will usually point to advertising.

Great ads flow from great products just as poetry flows from deep feelings. Telling a writer to write a great ad for a less-than-great product is like commanding a pregnant woman to give birth to a red-headed child.

To know the power of the ads that I might write for you, only two questions need be answered:

1. How good are you at what you do?
2. How good are your competitors? (Yes, you are being compared to everyone in your category whether you accept it or not. This is why the Wizard of Ads partners never attempt to write ads for a client until they have visited that client's competitors.)

The writing of sparkling ads for a dull business is like putting lipstick on a pig. If advertising were all it took to grow businesses to their full potential, the faculty of Wizard Academy would not be so heavily invested in the development of New School sales training, Wonder Branding, internet Persuasion Architecture, Systematic Idea Generation, Online Video Introductions, Radio in the 21st Century, Blogging, and Public Relations.

Soon my partner Mike Dandridge will release his new book, The One-Year Business Turnaround: Breakthrough Marketing Without Advertising. In that book, Mike will reveal fifty-two tested techniques that helped him build his electrical supply company to more than one million dollars a month in sales, even though he was challenged by Home Depot on the left and Lowe's on the right. Sound like something you might want to read?

Yes, Wizard Academy is investigating growth techniques far beyond traditional advertising. Is it maybe time that your business did, too?

Roy H. Williams

PS – Speaking of new books, Wizard Academy (and Harvard University) graduate Greg Farrell has written a dazzler, America Robbed Blind, that's now available from Wizard Academy Press. As a deep investigative reporter for USA Today, Greg shares the untold stories behind Enron, Tyco and Worldcom, as well as the truth behind the Martha Stewart scandal. Were you aware that the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission tried desperately to warn Congress of what was coming 13 months before the Enron debacle? Greg Farell's America Robbed Blind is an eye-opener that could easily be made into a movie. Hardcover.