Two-letter postal abbreviations don’t have periods after the letters, so when I titled today’s Monday Morning Memo, “Reno is West of L.A.” I was not using L.A. as the postal abbreviation for Louisiana.

Carson City – the capitol of Nevada – is likewise west of Los Angeles, as are 5 other state capitols. Juneau, Honolulu, Sacramento, Salem, and Olympia are the capitols of Alaska, Hawaii, California, Oregon, and Washington. West, west, west, west, and west of L.A.

Google it. Or Bing it. Or Yahoo it. However you like to do it.

Reno is located at 119°49′ West.

Los Angeles is 118°14′ West.

Reno is 86 miles west of Los Angeles.

Psalm 119:49 – the Reno Psalm – says,

“Remember your word to your servant, for you have given me hope.”

Reno was founded by Charles William Fuller, who built a bridge across the Truckee river so that settlers would not lose hope.

Psalm 118:14 – the L.A. Psalm – says,

“The LORD is my strength and my defense; he has become my salvation.”

Los Angeles was named “The Angels” in 1769 by Father Juan Crespi, a Franciscan priest who celebrated in his journal the discovery of a “beautiful river from the northwest.” A source of water that saved his thirsty band of travelers.

New Orleans is at 90°07′ West.

Psalm 90:7 – the New Orleans Psalm – says,

“We are consumed by your anger and terrified by your indignation.”

The French Quarter of New Orleans is 90.°06′ West.

Psalm 90:6 – the French Quarter Psalm –says,

“In the morning it springs up new, but by evening it is dry and withered.”

No. Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous. Have you lost your mind?

But let’s pretend that it does.

The latitude for my hometown of Broken Arrow, Oklahoma – which, prior to 1907 was “Indian Territory” – is 36.°06′ N.

Psalm 36:6 – the Broken Arrow Psalm – says,

“Your righteousness is like the highest mountains, your justice like the great deep. You, Lord, preserve both people and animals.”

We must now make up some additional rules because some of the Psalms don’t have enough verses to match the coordinates of certain cities. As an example: Chicago is at latitude 41°52′ North, and its longitude is 87°39′ West.

We’ll begin with longitude: Uh-oh, Psalm 87 doesn’t have a 39th verse.

Now let’s take a look at latitude: Uh-oh, Psalm 41 doesn’t have a 52nd verse.

But Genesis 41 does!

Genesis 41:52 – the Birth Verse of Chicago – says,

“The second son he named Ephraim and said, ‘It is because God has made me fruitful in the land of my suffering.’”

Chicago was incorporated in 1837, but it blossomed in an amazing second birth after the fire of 1871. Read it for yourself.

I went with “birth verse” because Genesis means...

You see big, steaming piles of predictable ads written by amateurs who assume the audience is required to listen.

You see frozen piles of heartless ads that speak to ideas rather than to people.

You see the scattered shrapnel of ads written by highly creative but trigger-happy typists who don’t understand the necessity of strategy.

Good ad copy flows from strategy.

Strategy flows from whatever is in the pantry of the advertiser.

You must begin by prowling through that pantry. Take inventory of all the unused story elements you will find hiding there.

A business owner wants to hire you. When you meet with that person, you realize that they want to be perceived in a certain way. They usually call this fantasy their “brand essence,” and if you do not indulge them in their fantasy, they will accuse you of not understanding their brand.

They want you to continue doing what they have done in the past, but make it work this time. If you disagree with their strategy, they will say, “You don’t understand who we are.”

You will say, “No, that is not who you are. That’s just who you want to be. But you don’t have the ingredients to bake that cake.”

This is always an unproductive argument, so when a business owner who wants to hire you says, “This is what I want you to do and this is how I want you to do it,” the best answer is to say, “It sounds to me like you’ve got things under control. Great idea! Follow your dream. God be with you. Stay in touch! Goodbye.”

If you employ the same strategy they have used in the past, it’s not going to work any better than it did in the past.

Your reason for thinking these thoughts will be that you need the money. But if you do what your prospective client tells you to do, this is what will happen:

1. Your ad campaign will underperform.
2. Your client will blame you.
3. You will be fired.
4. You will have a record of failure.
5. You will lose confidence in yourself.

Find your money elsewhere.

Consider that question carefully, because your client will certainly occupy your thoughts. Will you look forward to speaking with them, or will you dread it?

Even the best clients will occasionally ask you to do something that you believe is a bad idea. This is when you will need to do the opposite of what I told you a moment ago. When you have accepted the job, you can no longer say, “It sounds to me like you’ve got things under control. Great idea. Follow your dream. God be with you. Stay in touch. Goodbye.”

You have given this client a place in your life. You have accepted the role of being their ad writer. You have an ongoing relationship. This is when you have to remember that they did not hire you to be CEO.

1. Tell them that you will definitely do what they say.
2. Then tell them why you think it is a bad idea.
3. When they have heard you, and understood you, and asked that you do it anyway, make it a point of honor to figure out how to make their bad idea work.
4. Take ownership of the idea. Put everything you have into it. Be proud that you were able to make it work.
5. When you have an ongoing relationship, you no longer have the option to say, “You’re on your own.”

The power of an ad can be measured by the strength of the backlash against it.

Backlash doesn’t mean the ad is good; it...

Communicate your thoughts in short sentences. Those thoughts will be remembered, and you will, too.

Shorter hits harder.

I read a book by a man who is a deep thinker, a great strategist, and a good writer. His strengths are that he can identify, organize, and communicate key ideas.

But those ideas would hit harder if the man could write tighter.

1. reject unnecessary modifiers.

2. reduce the word count.

3. prove what they say.

4. use active voice.

Adjectives and adverbs are fatty foods. They give energy to your story when used sparingly but cause your sentences to feel bloated, sluggish and fat if you overindulge. Adjectives are less dangerous like good cholesterol, and adverbs are more dangerous like bad cholesterol, but a steady diet of these modifiers will clog the arteries of your story and slow it down until your audience falls asleep.

Editing will reduce your word count, but it is hard to edit what is freshly written. Look at it the next day and your mistakes will become obvious to you. Rearrange, reduce, and eliminate elements until your story is woven tightly and shines brightly.

You can communicate twice as much by using half as many words.

Willie Shakespeare taught us, “Brevity is the soul of wit.”1

Blaise Pascal and Benjamin Franklin are remembered for their wit. This is why both of them apologized in writing when they took too long to say too little.

Blaise Pascal in his Lettres Provinciales of 1657, wrote, “The present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter.”

Likewise, Benjamin Franklin concluded his 1750 Letter to the Royal Society in London by saying, “I have already made this paper too long, for which I must crave pardon, not having now time to make it shorter.”

A rainbow of people across the internet report that Martin Luther, Mark Twain, and Cicero of Rome made statements similar to the statements made by Blaise Pascal and Benjamin Franklin, but none of those colorful people can offer meaningful documentation.

Martin Luther died in 1546. A biography of Luther published 300 years later – in 1846 –quotes Luther as having said he “didn’t have time to make it shorter,” but the biographer could cite no text left behind by Martin Luther to support that quote.

Mark Twain died in 1910. In 1975 an article that appeared in the Chicago Tribune attributed a version of the “didn’t have time to make it shorter” statement to Twain, but the journalist could offer no text, no chapter, no page number, no contemporaneous witness as proof.

The person claiming that Cicero said he “didn’t have time to make it shorter” cites a book of quotes published in 1824 as “proof” of what Cicero supposedly said 1,800 years before that book of quotes was published. Cicero left behind no writings that contain that quote.

“Do not believe what you read on the internet.” – Albert Einstein

Passive voice:

“The sword is carried by me,” is passive because the subject – “The sword” – is acted upon by the verb.

Active voice:

“I carry the sword,” is active because the subject – “I” – takes the action.

Sentences spoken in active voice command attention.

Sentences spoken in passive voice are easily ignored.

A child becomes an adult when they say, “I broke the cookie jar,” instead of, “The cookie jar got broken.”

Don’t speak like a child. Let the subject take the action in every sentence you speak and write.

Like the man I mentioned earlier, Matt Willis is a deep thinker, a great strategist, and a good writer. But...