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 2nd 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.
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>
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