Why am I passionate about this?
I worked for thirty years in what was one of the world's finest ad agencies, producing campaigns that were popular, famous, and effective. I found it fun, fascinating but also frustrating, because I gradually realised that what we did that worked had little to do with the theories we were taught to believe. I can see now that our campaigns had much more in common with the worlds of entertainment, popular culture, PR, and showmanship than the dry ‘official’ concepts of propositions and persuasion that seemed to rule our lives. These five books helped open my eyes to this broader perspective, and I hope they will open yours too.
Paul's book list on making sense of the madness of advertising
Why did Paul love this book?
A well-written and dispassionate review of the US advertising scene, written by a journalist in the nineteen-fifties, might just sound like (ancient) advertising history. But when I first read this, it came as a massive revelation to me.
I realised that all the core concepts we’d been taught about advertising – propositions, reasons why, message recall, attention, and the rest – were nothing more than phrases spouted by some glib ad man of the past. And we don’t have to believe any of them unless we choose to.
1 author picked Madison Avenue, U.S.A as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
Madison Avenue U.S.A. is a reporter's portrayal of the advertising world and the creative and business minds that have shaped it. A best seller when it was first published in 1958, Martin Mayer's book is the result of hundreds of interviews with the greatest talents in the industry--among them advertising giants Bill Bernbach, James Webb Young, David Ogilvy and Rosser Reeves. Mr. Mayer highlights classic campaigns and the agencies that created them, capturing the excitement, the frenzy and the long hours of work behind original print and broadcast ads. He also reveals the workings of the industry--the money spent (and…
- Coming soon!