Wizard of Ads Partners

Particle Conflict is created by adding an element that doesn't belong, but fits.

Symbolic Thought is accessed by linking the unknown to the known.

Procedural Memory is a product of Relevance x Repetition.

Like to hear the Wizard describe these in depth? (Plus much more...)

Attend Magical Worlds Communications Workshop.

Below is an excerpt from the article:
Unattached Marketer Seeks Self-Employed Professional For Long Term Relationship by Wizard Partner, Chuck McKay

"A good consultant stacks the odds in the client's favor by having a broad knowledge of proven marketing techniques. ...the primary values any consultant provides are perspective, and advice... Sometimes the client doesn't wish to follow that advice." So what happens then?

So, in essence, [price] is changing people's experiences with a product and, therefore, the outcomes from consuming this product."

The lesson says Baba Shiva is that: "there's a temptation among marketers to keep reducing prices. We're saying be careful before you embark on that strategy."

Image from "the most expensive Journal"Does the price you paid for that expensive wine at dinner influence your satisfaction with that wine? The answer to this question may reside in the folds of your medial orbitofrontal cortex, the part of the brain that registers pleasure.
 
In what should be music to the ears of marketers, the old adage that you get what you pay for really is true when it comes to that most ephemeral of products: bottled wine.

The Research

A recent study by Baba Shiv, an Associate Professor of Marketing at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, and a group of researchers at California Institute of Technology concludes that people will experience an increase in activity and pleasure within the brain when they consume wine that they perceive to be expensive even though the part of the brain that interprets taste is not affected.

In an article, co-authored by Baba Shiv, titled "Marketing Actions Can Modulate Neural Representations of Experienced Pleasantness," published online Jan. 14 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, students were placed in a MRI and given sips of red wine-including the same one twice, with different price tags: $5.00 (the actual price) and $45.00 (a fictional price). The subjects reported that they liked the expensive wine more than the cheaper wine even though it was the same wine - a preference that was mirrored by an increased activity in the medial orbitofrontal cortex of their brains as measured by the MRI. While many studies have looked at how marketing affects behavior, this is the first to show that it has a direct effect on the brain.

The Marketing Implications

Click to read more ...

Archetypal Patterns, Part 3
By Roy H. Williams    Hear Memo... 

"For more than a quarter century I’ve made my living dethroning market leaders and setting my clients in their places. And in all those years I’ve never seen a category leader do anything but what they do best. This predictability makes them easy to defeat."

Here's the Pattern: When times are tough and customers are scarce, business owners buckle down and try to become even better at the things they do well. They do this because they trust the Guide pattern, “This has always worked in the past.”

Perhaps you're doing the same.

But following the Guide pattern in a declining market won’t take you where want to go, since staying who you are won’t expand your customer base.

To grow your sales volume you must increase your market share. You must attract those customers who, in the past, have chosen not to do business with you. But those customers won’t make a new decision about your business until you give them new information. As long as you keep doing what you’ve always done (and saying what you've always said,) they’ll keep making the decision they’ve always made.

They’ll keep buying somewhere else.

To grow, you must expand your identity.  Add to your message. Appeal to additional customers.

The Challenge pattern of new circumstances demands that you choose a new Guide pattern.

Leaders usually cling to old Guide patterns in times of stress. This is why challengers often overtake leaders during times of upheaval. The leaders were reluctant to reinvent themselves.

Click to read more ...

"There'll be two dates on your tombstone/ And all your friends will read 'em/ But all that's gonna matter is that little dash between 'em..." - Kevin Welch

 

"A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way." - John C. Maxwell

 

"The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook." - William James

From the library of the Wizard.... Planting a mental trigger.
One of the ways Wizard of Ads helps grow owner-operated businesses.

"Successfully implanted, a reticular activator will cause your prospective customer immediately to think of your company when she has need of your product."

YOU BUY A NEW CAR. As soon as you drive out of the dealer’s lot, you begin seeing cars just like yours everywhere you go. We can safely assume these cars were here yesterday — but yesterday you didn’t notice them, and today you aren’t looking for them. What’s happening?

Your old refrigerator begins to make odd noises. You finish breakfast and go to work, immediately forgetting about the refrigerator and the noise. During lunch, you read the paper and notice an ad for refrigerators on sale. You weren’t thinking about your refrigerator, but you notice the ad anyway. What’s happening?

You are asked to total fourteen different columns of single- digit numbers. Each of the fourteen columns adds up to exactly fourteen. You are now asked to name a vegetable. You say “carrots.” Why?

Planting a reticular activator in the mind of the customer is the Mount Everest of ad writers. The reticular activator is a mental trigger in your unconscious that directs your attention and causes you to notice and remember things you never intentionally committed to memory. Successfully implanted, a reticular activator will cause your prospective customer immediately to think of your company when she has need of your product.

It is easier to implant a reticular activator using sound rather than sight. Medical science tells us it takes 29 percent longer to understand written words than spoken words. This is because the brain must translate the written word into the spoken word before it can be understood. When we memorize the written word, it is the sound of the words we remember, not their appearance on the page. This is true even when we have been reading silently. We hear the words in our minds.

The eye cannot be trusted to remember what it has seen. One of the most frustrating parts of police work is that different eyewitnesses often recall an event differently. Yet people can repeat the last sentence a person said, even if they weren’t paying attention. How often has someone asked, “Are you listening?” and even though you weren’t, you could repeat verbatim their last statement?

Information taken in through the eyes enters into iconic memory and disappears in less than one second. Information that enters through the ears rattles around in echoic memory for nearly five seconds before it dissipates.

Well-written, intrusive ads establish echoic retention through the use of a reticular activator. Echoic retention and a reticular activator will cause you to say “carrots” after repeating the number “fourteen.”

How many times have you heard the phrase “fourteen-karat gold”?

From the Editor: But be warned - Planting a Mental trigger is NOT a short term strategy. It takes a relevant message (Uncovery and message development) and frequency (money)... and then you still have to wait for the moment of need. Do you have the patience?

PS. Do you need help planting a mental trigger in the mind of your customer?