Success Quote by Roy H. Williams

Advertising loves to cosplay as wizardry: secret formulas, neuromarketing hacks, “words that sell.” Roy H. Williams punctures that mystique with a businessman’s bluntness. “Writing good ads is easy when you have something to say” is less pep talk than indictment. If your copy feels like it’s wrestling the page, the problem probably isn’t the writer. It’s the emptiness behind the brief.

The line smuggles a hard standard into an apparently friendly reassurance. “Something to say” doesn’t mean having a slogan; it means having an actual claim you can defend: a product that solves a real problem, a perspective that isn’t interchangeable, a promise with stakes. Williams is quietly shifting the locus of creative difficulty upstream. Good ads aren’t born from clever adjectives; they’re born from decisions: who this is for, what it does better, what you’re willing to exclude. Once those choices exist, the ad becomes transcription, not alchemy.

There’s also a cultural jab at the modern marketplace’s addiction to noise. When brands don’t have substance, they inflate style: quips, trend-chasing, “purpose” language pasted over commodity sameness. Williams suggests that the audience can smell that desperation. The subtext: authenticity isn’t a vibe; it’s evidence.

Contextually, this fits a business worldview that treats marketing as a downstream consequence of product truth. The best copywriter in the world can’t outwrite a muddled offer. But a clear, differentiated promise makes “good ads” feel easy because the message is doing the heavy lifting, not the theatrics.