The Wizard Academy tower sits on a plateau 900 feet above the city of Austin. The view from the stardeck is stunning.

When you attend our free public seminar on the afternoon of March 17, you will be in Tuscan Hall just 500 feet from the tower. If you have some extra time on campus, perhaps Dave Young will be willing to press the button that lifts you from the underground art gallery up to the stardeck so that you can look around.

This is what I will teach you in Tuscan Hall:

1. How to create a magnetic personality for your brand. It’s easier than you think.
2. How to use personification to breathe life into all your corporate communications, beginning with your advertising.
3. How to use character banter and magical thinking to help customers understand that your company has beliefs, values, motives, can make choices, and that it has life.
4. How to gather these techniques into an operating plan that will integrate this magnetic new personality into every touchpoint of your business.
5. How to measure the trajectory and momentum of your rejuvenated brand.

You’re going to have a good time. I will include lots of examples of PowerSelling ads that have lifted people to new heights.

Q: PowerSelling. What is it?

A: PowerSelling is an advertising technique that makes your name the one people think of first – and feel the best about – when they need what you sell.

Q: Does it work for B2B? (Business to Business)

A: Not really. B2B requires tight targeting and significantly more logic than is required to win the hearts of the public. [NOTE: If today’s memo feels different than the typical Monday Morning Memo, it is because this is probably the first example of B2B writing that you have ever seen me write. Are you noticing the additional logic? – RHW]

Q: Does it work for Direct Response offers?

A: No. Direct Response offers are built almost entirely on features and benefits, the so-called “value proposition,” enhanced by an urgent call-to-action, usually with a final bit of “added value” if you “act now.”

Q: So what’s it good for?

A: PowerSelling is for products and services that have a long purchase cycle and a relatively high price tag; things like diamond engagement rings, legal services, medical services, and home services like plumbing, air conditioning, roofing, and electrical. PowerSelling is strictly B2C (Business to Consumer) and it almost always employs mass media; television or radio, sometimes with billboards added.

Q: Will there be recordings made, or perhaps a livestream?

A: Sorry, but no. The Wizards of Ads® have little desire to debate – or educate – a world full of traditional ad writers that have been trained on the tripe that is taught in college.*

You are going to learn the explosive techniques that will make your advertising leap off the launchpad with fire and smoke as you begin your journey to the stars. You will feel your acceleration grow to the point where your cheeks are pulled back and your eyes become slits as the corners of your mouth touch your earlobes.

Or maybe you are just smiling.

If you are ready for the ride of your life, be in Austin on March 17th.

Roy H. Williams

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“Running a big company is like...

Your heart tells you who you are. Your heart contains all your beliefs.

PowerSelling radiates outward from the pulsating fact that people don’t bond with companies; people bond with people; personalities that share their beliefs.

Your company needs a personality if you want your customers to feel a connection to it. Does your company have a personality?

Are you communicating that personality in your advertising?

Personification puts the power in PowerSelling.

When you speak about something that cannot think as though it can think, you are using the art of personification.

“The shattered water made a misty din.

Great waves looked over others coming in

and thought of doing something to the shore

that water never did to land before.”

When you speak about something that cannot ask questions as though it can ask questions, you are using personification.

“My little horse must think it queer

to stop without a farmhouse near

between the woods and frozen lake

the darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake

to ask if there is some mistake.”

When you speak about something that cannot move as though it can move, you are using the art of personification.

“It rained endlessly and the forests wept.

The darkness fell and the trees moved closer.”

When you can breathe life into something that is not alive, you are a god.

Robert Frost and John Steinbeck were able to provide us with those examples of personification because they are Nobel Prize-winning writers. But we couldn’t write like that, could we?

“Your house will giggle with glee when it sees the smart thermostat you bought for it.”

Your logical mind tells you that your customers wouldn’t fall for that, but they’ve been falling for it all their lives. Superman is merely ink on a page or pixels on a screen, but your customers know that Superman can fly, squeeze a lump of coal into a diamond, and that he is in love with Lois Lane.

The book of Genesis tells us that God spoke our universe into existence, then it tells us that we are made in the image of God.

Did it ever occur to you that you speak new worlds into existence in the minds of others every time you describe a possible future?

Personification is powerful because it uses magical thinking to open a portal into that world of imagination where hope is alive and well and singing in the shower, where the glass slipper fits the foot of Cinderella, and a wooden puppet named Pinocchio becomes a real live human boy.

I am now going to shake you by the shoulders to wake you up. What I am about to say is hard to hear, but I am saying it because I love you: If you believe a brand is a logo, a color palette, a slogan, a visual style guide, and a company name that people have heard of, then your company is just another dreary, drab, and bland corporation in an ocean of bland corporations. Your company has no soul.

Remember: People don’t bond with companies; people bond with personalities that share their beliefs.

PowerSelling happens when you win the customer’s heart, knowing that their mind will follow. Their mind will always create logic to justify what their heart has already decided.

This is what you must learn to do if you want to create a bond with your customers:

1. Breathe life into your company through the skillful use of personification in all your corporate communications, beginning with your advertising.
2. Employ magical thinking to deepen the public perception that your company has beliefs, values, motives, can make choices, and that it has life.
3. Bond with customers who believe in the

Curiosity is a beagle running through the forest with its nose to the ground.

Curiosity is the cure for boredom. There is no cure for curiosity.

Curious, I asked, “How did the Kardashians become famous?” I wish I hadn’t.

“Through different ventures, several members of the family have assets of over $1 billion. Kim Kardashian became a celebrity in 2007, after selling a pornographic film featuring ex-boyfriend, singer Ray J, which enabled the family to rise to stardom.” – Google

The reason I asked Google, “How did the Kardashians become famous?” is because I was talking with a client last week when I said, “Vulnerability – letting people see you ‘real’ – is the only currency that can purchase real trust.” Then I spontaneously added, “You have to choose between being vulnerable or going full Kardashian.”

I thought I had invented a new phrase, but as it turns out, “going full Kardashian” was already a thing.

Google has its own definition of what it means to “go full Kardashian,” and Indy posted that list in the rabbit hole for you.

But this is my list:

1. If you believe, “Whoever dies with the most toys, wins,” you are in danger of going full Kardashian.

People are more important than possessions.

1. If you believe that looking good is more important than doing good, you are in danger of going full Kardashian.

Beauty, fame, and wealth are outside your skin. Kindness, generosity, and joy are within.

1. If you believe it’s okay to do things that are unethical, immoral, and destructive as long as you are doing nothing illegal, you are in danger of going full Kardashian.

A society grows great when old people plant trees under whose shade they will never sit.

I try to surround myself with tree planters. Jeremy Grigg is one of them.

In our weekly Friday gathering of like-minded men, Jeremy said,

“When a business is evaluating whether or not they can trust you, the attributes they are measuring are, 1. Ability, 2. Integrity, and 3. Benevolence. These are their unspoken questions: ‘Are you good at your job?’ ‘Will you tell me the truth?’ ‘Are you truly trying to help me?’ Most of us focus on ability to the exclusion of integrity and benevolence. After all, when you are petitioning to win work, you want to make sure that the person who can do it for you is actually competent at their job. But in the longer term, honoring your promises, which is integrity and most importantly, giving a damn about the success of what they’re trying to achieve is what really determines whether you are the sort of long-term partner that they’re looking for.”

Jeremy is an international consultant to multibillion-dollar IT services companies.

Natalie Doyle Oldfield studies the drivers of customer loyalty and business growth. She says that half of all customers are willing to pay more for the same product or service if the seller has earned their trust. According to Natalie, “Trust is the critical value that top companies rely on to secure their market dominance and drive their growth.”

I know for a fact that what Natalie is saying is true.

I’ve been helping people do it for more than 40 years.

Roy H....