What is All This Wizard Stuff?

When I was first introduced to the Wizard of Ads, the books and his academy, I had an eerie feeling this was something like a cult. (Which I understand others have felt – and I also hears gives the folks behind the phenomenal Wizard Academy a chuckle every time they hear someone else say it.)

The station owner/sales manager that I worked for at the time had become completely enamoured with the teachings from the first 2 books, and had himself become a quasi-disciple of the teachings (later he would go on to become much more than that).

I wasn’t actually at the radio station when the majority of the fervour around Roy Williams first occurred, as I was in a hospital having major surgery to reconstruct my hips (that’s a really long story, maybe for another time).  I heard about what was happening from the fringes, which only made it seem more unusual as people told me about ads with Suessing, shades of Claude Monet and in the style of the images of Robert Franck. 

But once I had done my rehab from surgery and returned to work, I was hit full in the face with this thing called the Wizard of Ads and stories from the Wizard Academy in Austin Texas.  Even though I knew nothing about him or his style of business marketing – I was asked to try to emulate his style of ad writing, simply by watching a few videos from one of his seminars, and reading the 2^nd book “Secret Formula's of The Wizard Of Ads”.  Now I was convinced this was a cult!

Still, since it seemed to be a condition of continued employment – so I did my best to understand and my boss did his best to get me (and others around the station) to understand the many benefits to be gleaned from his methods.  I have to admit in retrospect, my first attempts were pretty bad.  I just did not understand what I was being told --- quite frankly it was so different than anything else I had ever been taught or experienced – I mean writing ads like poetry or by describing the hinted reality of Claude Monet – that’s crazy stuff!

It wasn’t until I actually attended the Wizard Academy in Austin that I really began a journey towards the truth.  This was not, as I had wrongly concluded, a cult.  What it is, is a place created to teach those who are truly interested in building and improving their business – or in the case of radio marketers – helping those you work with to improve their business by teaching you what works in a hypersensitive, media savvy world.

For me it was an eye-opening experience.  One that’s still affecting me to this day and has quite frankly changed my views on how to write ads.  I used to believe the best way to achieve success was to entertain. Comedy, sound effects and unusual voices or situations were my tools.

Today I am fully focused on how I can make the best, most persuasive ad for any business I’m lucky enough to write for. For the most part the window dressing I used to rely on has been sent to the sidelines or refocused for different purposes. Sometimes the businesses I create ads for listen to my advice – and sometimes they don’t. 

 If you are currently in radio marketing, run a business or just plain interested in marketing I suggest you subscribe to and start reading the Monday Morning Memo from the Wizard of Ads.

These days I read these memo’s, both present and past, to bathe myself in words of relevance and reminder.  For I am surrounded by those who strive not to offend -- and have no stomach for, or interest in true persuasion.  This is how I keep myself sane, and striving for the day I can finally do what I know, with every ounce of my being, is correct. 

And it is why I feel such dread for the future and survival of radio. It seems to me that the days when people did powerful things with radio are so far in the rear view mirror as to be rendered invisible.  These days everything in homogenized and pasteurised, every minute detail is worried and fretted so as to assure that no one is offended.

 Of course the reality is that while everyone has been focused on how to make things “safe”, they’ve failed to notice that people stopped caring what they were doing and lost interest in what they had to say.  Making what I do for a career so much harder. 

If you’re interested in learning more about how to write ads that work in today’s media/hype savvy world, when so much of what was before has begun to fail – I suggest you read the following 2 Memo’s from Roy Williams.

http://www.mondaymorningmemo.com/newsletters/read/1565

http://www.mondaymorningmemo.com/newsletters/read/1894

But before you do that I would also suggest you subscribe to the Monday Morning Memo at http://www.mondaymorningmemo.com .  Every week you will get a shot of wisdom sent directly to your email.  Sometimes it’s very focused on marketing, sometimes it isn’t – but I can that it is always interesting and thought provoking. 

photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/grrrl/211330471/">marie-ll</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/">cc</a>

Just Make Me Laugh Ad Boy

I used to think that radio ads with comedy -- were great ads.

I felt that way before I went to college to study Radio, and when I left I was absolutely sure of it.  It seems to me those were the ads we studied, and the ones that when written by us, always garnered the most praise from our instructors.  Now I’m not saying that’s what they taught me – I expect that I heard what I wanted to hear – and I wanted to hear that ads with outrageous comedy were the way to go. 

So when I got my first writing job, my goal was to write stupendous comedy ads.  Sure I had to do my best to write “great” ads for a lot of “sale” copy ads – and straight forward event ads, but every now and then I was able to write some ads that I was certain were comedy gold!  And that’s where my pride of accomplishment lay.  I saved every one of them that made it air – convinced that one day they would be my key to success, fame and fortune.

Of course these days I would have to admit that the ads of my first few years, were not going to deliver me to any promised land.  For the most part they were laced with naivete and poor structure.  To my defence, I was really raw.  And I did not know any better.  Besides I seemed to get compliments when my ads were funny.

However like my ability to write ads has improved over the years, my aptitude to discern what constitutes a good, effective ad has also sharpened.  And these days I play a lot less with comedy in my ads.  You see I’ve discovered what people like Roy Williams said about comedy is true – it really is nytro glycerin.

It can easily blow up in your face if it’s not handled with extreme care. 

Entertaining (comic) ads can work, if there’s a direct connection between entertainment and the one thought you’re trying to plant in the minds of shoppers. In far too many ads the entertainment is not relevant to the advertising message.

Chuck McKay (http://fishingforcustomers.com/)

Not only is that point true – but everyone has a different sense of humour, and what you find funny, may not be funny to someone else.  But the main reason that humour fails to work most often in radio ads is simple – as stated by Chuck McKay -- the comedy has little or nothing to do with the main point of the ad.  It’s humour for humour’s sake. 

A lot of times it seems that the joke is written first, and then the idea the marketer wants to get across is slipped into the middle of the joke/scenario because they had to do it.  And when the ad is done, you’ve found the ad very funny, but for some reason you can’t remember who it was for – or what point they were trying to make. It’s actually interesting to hear people talk about the ads they really love and discover just how often people can not remember the name of the client who paid for the ad!

I’ve gotta tell you, if it was my money on the line – I’d want to be extra sure they remembered who picked up the tab and why I bought the ads in the first place – a whole lot more than they remembered the joke! 

So my basic advice to you as a young writer or an inexperienced radio advertiser would be to stay as far away from comedy in your ads as possible.  I’d urge you to spend a greater amount of your time trying to find that thing that you do that solves a problem everyone listening to your ads has. 

They (the listeners) may love your comedy ad – but if they don’t buy your product and help to keep the doors to your business open, then really what was the point.  Unless of course you just wanted to add a little comedy to the lives of those around you, and you don’t care if anyone knows you were the one who paid for it.  

photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/bispham2/354689364/">JohnBurke</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/">cc</a>