"Numerals are images of amounts. But the amounts they represent are real." -- Roy H. Williams
Roy Hollister Williams is a best selling author and marketing consultant best known for his Wizard of Ads trilogy. He is founder of the Wizard Academy institute and currently lives in Austin, Texas with his wife Pennie.
Williams produces and publishes a free weekly column and podcast titled the Monday Morning Memo.
"A good story often increases the salability of an item without increasing its actual value.""A meaningless statement remains meaningless no matter how often it's heard.""A portal is a transitionary device of sight or sound that functions as a sort of third gravitating body between the this and the that, pulling us toward itself, allowing us to bridge into the unknown from the known.""A smart man makes a mistake, learns from it, and never makes that mistake again. But a wise man finds a smart man and learns from him how to avoid the mistake altogether.""A visual image in the hand of an artist is merely a tool to trigger a mental image.""A visual image is a simple thing, a picture that enters the eyes.""According to String Theory, what appears to be empty space is actually a tumultuous ocean of strings vibrating at the precise frequencies that create the 4 dimensions you and I call height, width, depth and time.""Consequently, a young business often grows by large percentages. Mature businesses rarely do.""Contrary to popular belief, Americans don't hate advertising.""Einstein was searching for String Theory. It not only reconciles General Relativity to Quantum Mechanics, but it reconciles Science and the Bible as well.""Have you heard of this new thing called the internet? It's giving people new expectations. It's allowing them to become their own expert. Knowledge lies anxious at their fingertips. Gloss over the truth in your advertising and you'll quickly be dismissed as a poser.""Human beings are creators, flinging powerful images into the minds of their fellow men. And all of these images are built of tiny particles of thought.""If you're not worried that you're pricing it too cheap, you're not pricing it cheap enough.""In essence, String Theory describes space and time, matter and energy, gravity and light, indeed all of God's creation... as music.""In marketing you must choose between boredom, shouting and seduction. Which do you want?""It appears that the media filters we carry in our heads are like computers: they've been forced to get faster in order to keep up with the demands our high-speed society puts on them.""Lives, like money, are spent. What are you buying with yours?""Month after month, Wizard Academy equips people who want to make a difference. This is why journalists and scientists and artists and educators and business owners and advertising professionals and ministers are attracted to our little school.""No trade will be made unless they want the thing more than they want their money.""One thing that hasn't changed, though, is that we still have to hear the new ad 2 or 3 times before it begins to affect us, even when we're already familiar with the advertiser in question and have a positive opinion of them.""People don't trade money for things when they value their money more highly than they value the things.""Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity are both accepted as scientific fact even though they're mutually exclusive. Albert Einstein spent the second half of his life searching for a unifying truth that would reconcile the two.""String Theory describes energy and matter as being composed of tiny, wiggling strands of energy that look like strings. And the pitch of a string's vibration determines the nature of its effect.""Strings of gravity vibrate at a different frequency than strings of light.""The first step in exceeding your customer's expectations is to know those expectations.""The salability of an item can often be improved while the value itself remains unchanged.""The value of an item - in the mind of a consumer - is simply the difference between the anticipated price and the price on the tag.""What this means is that the first week of every new series of ads will continue to yield softer results than you can expect to see in weeks two and three.""Words are mere shadows cast by ideas. But the ideas they represent are real.""Writing good ads is easy when you have something to say.""You see a person when you look in the mirror that no one sees but you. Other people see a person when they look at you, but you're not that person, either."
Does your ad dog bite?: (or is it just a show dog?) the warm, witty, and revealing thoughts of America's most controversial ad writer (Miracle Publishing 1997)
The Wizard of Ads: Turning Words into Magic and Dreamers into Millionaires (Bard Press, 25 July 1998) ISBN 978-1885167323
Secret Formulas of the Wizard of Ads: Turning Paupers into Princes and Lead into Gold (Bard Press, 25 September 1999) ISBN 978-1885167408
Magical Worlds of the Wizard of Ads: Tools and Techniques for Profitable Persuasion (Bard Press, 25 December 2001) ISBN 978-1885167538
Free the Beagle: A Journey to Destinae (Bard Press, 25 October 2002) ISBN 978-1885167576
Destinae (Wizard Academy Press, 26 September 2003) ISBN 978-1932226140
Beagles Visit the Seven Sisters
People Stories; Inside the Outside (Wizard Academy Press, 22 April 2006) ISBN 978-1932226508
Best Sellers Lists
All three books included in William's Wizard of Ads Trilogy including: The Wizard of Ads, Secret Formulas of the Wizard of Ads, Magical Worlds of the Wizard of Ads, have been featured on the Wall Street Journal and New York Times bestsellers lists.
Williams founded Wizard Academy in May 2000 as a non-profit 501c3 educational institution located in Austin, Texas. The institutions goal was to provide in-depth teaching of the communication arts and the principals and philosophy espoused in Williams Wizard of Ads trilogy. The Academy was the brainchild of his wife, Pennie Williams, as a way to get her husband off the road. "Instead of sending him to them for a few hours, why not let them all come to Austin for a few days?"
Ideas
During a brainstorming session at Wizard Academy, Williams came up with the idea for the PropertyGuys.com unique round real estate sign.
