Here are 48 books that Madison Avenue, U.S.A fans have personally recommended if you like
Madison Avenue, U.S.A.
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I've been working in the field of AI for 40 years, first in graduate school and then as a professor. For the most part, I have had my head in the sand, focusing on the minutiae that occasionally lead to publications, the coins of the academic realm. When deep learning started exhibiting human-level pattern recognition abilities, the number of AI books for the general public began to swell. Unfortunately, the science-fiction scenarios were a bit much. Since understanding, recognizing, and admitting problems are vital steps toward a solution, I find these books to be the most important warnings of the impending tech-dominated future.
Although it is now a well-known fact that many actors are fighting for our online attention, and will do just about anything to get and keep it, Wu puts it all in historical perspective by going back to the 1800’s and the beginning of print advertising.
He then traces our relationships with ads across a century and four screens: movies, television, home computers, and finally the cell phone. For the same reason that I enjoy reading history books to try to make some sense of the world’s current political chaos, this masterpiece by Wu should ensure you that nothing about human greed has changed in any major way: the tools of exploitation just get more powerful and more addictive.
Attention merchant: an industrial-scale harvester of human attention. A firm whose business model is the mass capture of attention for resale to advertisers. In nearly every moment of our waking lives, we face a barrage of advertising enticements, branding efforts, sponsored social media, commercials and other efforts to harvest our attention. Over the last century, few times or spaces have remained uncultivated by the 'attention merchants', contributing to the distracted, unfocused tenor of our times. Tim Wu argues that this is not simply the byproduct of recent inventions but the end result of more than a century's growth and expansion…
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.
When I realised that brands and advertising campaigns are much more like hit records, blockbuster movies and celebrities than we usually admit, I wondered what makes some famous and others (mostly) not?
Thompson’s book is the best single answer I’ve found so far and shows that fame doesn’t automatically follow the best song, book, or advert – you have to work at being popular, distinctive, and talked about. Lessons all ad agencies should learn.
A Book of the Year Selection for Inc. and Library Journal
"This book picks up where The Tipping Point left off." -- Adam Grant, Wharton professor and New York Times bestselling author of ORIGINALS and GIVE AND TAKE
Nothing "goes viral." If you think a popular movie, song, or app came out of nowhere to become a word-of-mouth success in today's crowded media environment, you're missing the real story. Each blockbuster has a secret history-of power, influence, dark broadcasters, and passionate cults that turn some new products into cultural phenomena. Even the most brilliant ideas wither in obscurity…
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.
In the ‘creative’ agency where I worked we always looked down our noses at P.R. But reading this book I realised to my shame that the thinking of the best PR experts has generally been way ahead of the plonky theories of ad agencies.
Why try to ‘persuade’ people when you can create a version of reality that makes persuasion unnecessary? Compared with the jiu-jitsu of great P.R. even the best ads look like a clumsy punch on the nose.
The early years of the twentieth century were a difficult period for Big Business. Corporate monopolies, the brutal exploitation of labour, and unscrupulous business practices were the target of blistering attacks from a muckraking press and an increasingly resentful public. Corporate giants were no longer able to operate free from the scrutiny of the masses. The crowd is now in the saddle," warned Ivy Lee, one of America's first corporate public relations men. The people now rule. We have substituted for the divine right of kings, the divine right of the multitude." Unless corporations developed means for counteracting public disapproval,…
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.
It always seemed strange to me that the ad business has so often been terribly sniffy about the world of popular culture on which it depends.
Then, when I read this sociological history of the ad business, I understood why - how, from the very early days, ad agencies wanted to distance themselves from the disreputable medicine shows of the past and from the legacy of P.T. Barnum by aspiring to become a respectable "profession." Perhaps that was understandable. But in one way or another, this obsession has been the root of most of their mistakes ever since.
Fables of Abundance ranges from the traveling peddlers of early modern Europe to the twentieth-century American corporation, exploring the ways that advertising collaborated with other cultural institutions to produce the dominant aspirations and anxieties in the modern United States.
Drew Eric Whitman is known internationally as a dynamic consultant and trainer who smashes old advertising myths like a china-shop bull. Teaching the psychology behind the response for nearly four decades, he worked for the direct-marketing division of the largest ad agency in Philadelphia, was a senior copywriter for the country's leading direct-to-the-consumer insurance company, and was the associate copy chief for catalog giant Day-Timers. His work has been used by companies ranging from small retail shops to giant, multi-million dollar corporations. A popular keynote speaker at international affiliate marketing conferences, Drew’s intensive CA$HVERTISING Clinic teaches business people how to use consumer psychology to boost the effectiveness of their ads, brochures, sales letters, Websites, and more.
What’s it like to climb inside the mind of one of advertising’s most iconic legends? Reading this book is probably the closest thing to it. You’re sure to come out with a dramatically changed view on how the industry works, and doesn’t. I’ve quoted him often in Cashvertising because his no-bull approach to advertising resonates strongly with everything I’ve been teaching for nearly four decades. Make his words your own and then--when you speak to others about advertising--you’ll be speaking with the voice of unquestionable authority.
David Ogilvy is well known and respected as the most successful adman of all time. His bestselling book, Ogilvy on Advertising, gives valuable advice to young hopefuls and veterans of the industry wanting to improve their success rate.
I love building businesses. I’ve built several businesses, ranging from a one person consultancy to a venture-backed tech company to an 8-figure marketing agency to a managed HR marketplace to a virtual memorial services company. The only thing I love more than building businesses is building and helping create new entrepreneurs. These books have helped me tremendously in my journey and I hope they help you as well!
Gratitude is a fundamental part of my life as an entrepreneur and leader. Of the many books I love on gratitude, this is my favorite. It’s funny and poignant and successfully makes the case that gratitude is a game-changer when it comes to building the business and life of one’s dreams. I am grateful I found this book and this fantastic author!
Bestselling author A.J. Jacobs has undergone a life-changing and entertaining journey. The idea is deceptively simple: he takes one of our greatest pleasures- our morning cup of coffee - and tries to thank every single person involved in making it, from the barista to the coffee farmer and all those in between. This turns out to be a stunningly large number, including artists, chemists, presidents, mechanics, biologists, miners, smugglers and goatherds. Hundreds of people. Thousands. Maybe more.
Through this seemingly straightforward quest, Jacobs reveals inspiring truths. The book is a reminder of the amazing interconnectedness of our world. It shows…
Drew Eric Whitman is known internationally as a dynamic consultant and trainer who smashes old advertising myths like a china-shop bull. Teaching the psychology behind the response for nearly four decades, he worked for the direct-marketing division of the largest ad agency in Philadelphia, was a senior copywriter for the country's leading direct-to-the-consumer insurance company, and was the associate copy chief for catalog giant Day-Timers. His work has been used by companies ranging from small retail shops to giant, multi-million dollar corporations. A popular keynote speaker at international affiliate marketing conferences, Drew’s intensive CA$HVERTISING Clinic teaches business people how to use consumer psychology to boost the effectiveness of their ads, brochures, sales letters, Websites, and more.
If you want to run ads that work, you need to learn what makes them work. This book tells you. John Caples is widely regarded to be one of history’s most iconic advertising copywriters. The man knew how to influence people to buy. This classic book gets down to the very foundation of advertising effectiveness and is loaded with examples and success "recipes" that you can immediately apply to your own ads--no matter what you sell. 100% practical, too. Look for the 4th edition or earlier for a book that's “totally Caples” without dilution by editors to "modernize" (er, weaken!) it. Miss this, and you’re missing the Queen Mary
The fifth edition of this work on how to create successful advertising features new coverage on small businesses with limited revenues, non-profit advertising, as well as techniques of headlines, illustrations and layouts. There is also new information useful to smaller businesses.
William J. Buxton is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Communication Studies and Senior Fellow, Centre for Sensory Studies, at Concordia University Montreal, Qc, Canada. He is also professeur associé au Département d’information et de communication de l’Université Laval, Québec City, Québec, Canada. He has edited and co-edited five books related to the life and works of the Canadian political economist and media theorist, Harold Adams Innis.
Largely recognized as McLuhan’s first major work, this book provides a trenchant analysis of 1940’s popular culture in the United States, with particular reference to print-media advertising. To this end, it consists of x chapters, each of which consists of an image culled from newspapers and magazines, accompanied by an insightful—and often ironic—text. Dismissed by some as lacking in direction and coherence, the book actually has a tightly woven narrative that sheds considerable light on the gender issues, technology, and power structures of the day.
OURS is the first age in wruch many thousands of the best-trained individual minds have made it a full-time business to get inside the collective public mind. To get inside in order to manipulate, exploit, control is the object now. And to generate heat not light is the intention. To keep everybody in the helpless state engendered by prolonged mental rutting is the effect of many ads and much entertainment alike. Since so many minds are engaged in bringing about this condition of public helplessness, and since these programs of commercial education are so much more expensive and influential than…
Drew Eric Whitman is known internationally as a dynamic consultant and trainer who smashes old advertising myths like a china-shop bull. Teaching the psychology behind the response for nearly four decades, he worked for the direct-marketing division of the largest ad agency in Philadelphia, was a senior copywriter for the country's leading direct-to-the-consumer insurance company, and was the associate copy chief for catalog giant Day-Timers. His work has been used by companies ranging from small retail shops to giant, multi-million dollar corporations. A popular keynote speaker at international affiliate marketing conferences, Drew’s intensive CA$HVERTISING Clinic teaches business people how to use consumer psychology to boost the effectiveness of their ads, brochures, sales letters, Websites, and more.
Here’s a classic by the man who started it all. Claude Hopkins is regarded as one of the greatest copywriters of all time. He pioneered the “Reason-Why” style of copywriting (telling people why to buy your product). It’s filled with priceless stories, humor, and practical lessons you can apply to your ads immediately. Get this classic if you're truly serious about learning to create effective ads! While your competitors are floundering around scratching their heads because their ads aren’t working, you’ll know exactly what to do to influence people to buy NOW!
Gain a lifetime of experience from the inventor of test marketing and coupon sampling -- Claude C. Hopkins. Here, you'll get two landmark works in one, and discover his fixed principles and basic fundamentals that still prevail today.
By 18 I had read all the books I chose for this essay. During high school, I read biographies of John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Jefferson, Geronimo, Anne Bonny, J. Pierpont Morgan, Winston Churchill, Sophocles, and more. In addition to panoramic, sweeping, epic fiction—Harold Robbins, Tai-Pan, Lawrence of Arabia, Faulkner, Doctor Zhivago (read in Russian and English)—I studied and reread self-help, “how-to” books on everything: writing, cooking, fishing, whatever. I read Ted Williams’ book on hitting a baseball, but, alas, it didn’t help.
Obvious Adams is a gem of a “book.” It is 58 pages long, and was originally published as a short story in the Saturday Evening Post magazine in 1916. Adams becomes an advertising superstar because he does one hard thing: he thinks. By thinking, he discovers obvious solutions to knotty problems. Did you ever here someone say, “I wish I thought of that?” The answer is simple: you didn’t study, analyze, think, hard enough. When my mother read my first book, “How to Become CEO,” she said, “Jeffrey, much of this is obvious.” “Correct Mom, but nobody does it.”
OBVIOUS ADAMS was first published as a short story in the Saturday Evening Post in April, 1916. Though it was the story of an advertising man, it was quickly recognized as presenting a germ idea basic to outstanding success in the business world and the professions. Harper & Brothers brought out the story in book form in September of the year of its publication in the Post. The book met with a ready sale. In reviewing it, the New York Times said, "The young man who is going to seek his fortune in the advertising business should have Obvious Adams…
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