Here are 15 books that PR! A Social History Of Spin fans have personally recommended if you like
PR! A Social History Of Spin.
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I’m a professor of political science at Valdosta State University in Georgia, USA. I have long had an interest in new technology and its implications for international relations and society. I have taught classes on international relations, global public policy, and international institutions. I have also published in these areas. Since the internet has been a disruptive force in both the national and international environments, I believe, as a political scientist, that it is vital to understand its effects on existing power relationships. I hope you find the books on my list enlightening.
In today’s media environment of 24-hour news, clickbait, and social media, there is tremendous competition to grab our attention. Our attention and our data have become commodities that can be monetized and sold to the highest bidder.
I love this book because Wu places this struggle for our attention in a broader historical context, tracing its roots to a 19th-century newspaper owner who discovered that advertising revenue could bring in more profits than the price he charged for newspapers. This business model has been applied to radio, television, and now the internet, but the goals remain the same.
Wu is a consummate storyteller and provides numerous examples of how we are being manipulated for profit.
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.
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.
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…
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.
Conflict and disagreement have always interested me. I was a middle child, so I naturally fell into the role of peacemaker. But I also had strong opinions, and I always thought I knew the right answer. The pursuit of education, love, and a career brought me to rural Montana, an Asian metropolis, and everywhere in between. These experiences deepened my fascination regarding how people could have such different beliefs, and how we are to live together despite those differences. A PhD in Science and Technology Studies, supervised by a political scientist, sent me on the path to diagnosing what ails American democracy, and what the cure might be.
This book is a classic. I recommend it to all my students. While the events discussed are dated: Three Mile Island, silicone breast implants, the Exxon Valdez oil spill, I found the lessons to be perennial.
Lawrence Susskind and Patrick Field show that when companies or government agencies focus on defending themselves during a crisis and fail to take responsibility, public confidence is only further eroded. I really enjoyed that, in the end, Dealing with an Angry Public is a practical guide to restoring and keeping trust, one that professionals in nuclear energy, public health, and other controversial fields would do well to read and understand.
Some portion of the American public will react negatively to almost any new corporate initiative, as Disney discovered when it announced its plans to build an historical theme park in Virginia. Similarly, government efforts to change policy or shift budget priorities are invariably met with stiff resistance. In this enormously practical book, Lawrence Susskind and Patrick Field analyze scores of both private and public-sector cases, as well as crisis scenarios such as the Alaskan oil spill, the silicone breast implant controversy, and nuclear plant malfunction at Three Mile Island. They show how resistance to both public and private initiatives can…
After years of struggling to start my own business, I had a revelation that changed everything for me. The best marketers weren’t marketers—they were resourceful punks, propagandists, cult leaders, and other assorted riff-raff. I began to adopt their tactics, and I started having some success—first as a freelance copywriter and then as a marketing agency owner. Ever since, I’ve been obsessed by the weird psychology we fall into when we’re with other humans and how people can hack that psychology to make others do what they want.
This was the book that kicked off my obsession with mind control, social psychology, and media hacking. Ryan Holiday is one of the modern era's best marketers, and he's a pretty great writer as well. When he ran the marketing at American Apparel (at twenty-something), he took hype to new heights.
A small list of some of his stunts: Hiring a porn star to pose in nothing but socks in an ad for a clothing company, secretly defacing his own clients' billboards to generate publicity, and provoking a famous Internet media startup legend to threaten to punch him in the face in order to drive up book sales.
In this book, he reveals all his tricks while delivering a scathing critique of the broken system that let him do what he did.
You've seen it all before. A malicious online rumor costs a company millions. A political sideshow derails the national news cycle and destroys a candidate. Some product or celebrity zooms from total obscurity to viral sensation. What you don't know is that someone is responsible for all this. Usually, someone like me.
I'm a media manipulator. In a world where blogs control and distort the news, my job is to control blogs-as much as any one person can.
IN TODAY'S CULTURE... Blogs like Gawker, BuzzFeed, and The Huffington Post drive the media agenda. Bloggers are slaves to money, technology, and…
There is a scene in the 1960 movie adaptation of The Time Traveler by HG Wells where the protagonist goes rapidly into the future as he watches a whole city spin into existence around him. That’s how I feel about my career. I started in 1994 and have watched UX grow into an incredible field! I’ve run my own business since 2008 focused exclusively on qualitative research consulting while also doing all sorts of exciting thought leadership activities – from writing to speaking to creating a number of courses on LinkedIn Learning – and I love to build my UX network too! I live in Silver Spring, Maryland.
One thing that I’ve seen happen is that UX professionals and aspiring UX professionals focus intensively on learning the methods needed to practice UX to the detriment of focusing on learning necessary soft skills.
There is a whole category of books that, while not UX specific, talk about how to practice those soft skills. This book is one of my favorites – it explains the value of building your network and relationships towards professional success.
Those relationships are really one of the keys to career success as a UX professional.
The bestselling business classic on the power of relationships, updated with in-depth advice for making connections in the digital world.
Do you want to get ahead in life? Climb the ladder to personal success?
The secret, master networker Keith Ferrazzi claims, is in reaching out to other people. As Ferrazzi discovered in early life, what distinguishes highly successful people from everyone else is the way they use the power of relationships—so that everyone wins.
In Never Eat Alone, Ferrazzi lays out the specific steps—and inner mindset—he uses to reach out to connect with the thousands of colleagues, friends, and associates…
We’ve had the privilege to be part of a profession that has developed beyond all recognition. Both of us worked in senior public relations roles and know how difficult leadership can be in this context. A desire to combine what we’d learned with the best research resulted in us becoming professors in a university business school. Our aim is to provide a bridge between practice and academia, an ambition that has led us to work with inspiring practitioners and researchers around the world. We’ve had a great time and as you’ll see from our ‘book picks’ we draw on many perspectives to inform our work as authors, educators, and researchers.
What is public relations actually all about: the good, the bad, and the ugly? I found this book by Lee Edwards to be one of the most thoughtful texts ever written about an increasingly important profession. Taking the stance that public relations is not only used by organisations, but is deeply embedded in our society and culture, this book provides a comprehensive overview of how it shapes our lives and societies in all kinds of ways. It’s a powerful and challenging read.
This book argues that public relations is not merely an organizational tool, but a powerful influence on social and political life. From carefully considered communication by multinational corporations, to government campaigns that manage public opinion, to the self-promotion of celebrities via social media, public relations is central to our individual and collective lives.
Understanding Public Relations introduces a socio-cultural approach to public relations as a way of analysing the growing importance of public relations in its social, cultural and political contexts. Encouraging a deeper and more critical understanding of its influence on society, Lee Edwards:
My first career was as a reporter on daily newspapers. As I got promoted to editing and eventually webmaster jobs, I needed to learn about design. Newspapers had been trying to figure out which designs attract the most readers for a century. The Poynter Institute, founded in 1975, began doing quantitative research as part of its journalism education mission. Seven years later, Gannett, a large newspaper publisher, introduced USA Today, based on the latest graphic and readability research. About the same time, Edward Tufte wrote his seminal book on graphic design (See recommendation #1). With the arrival of the web, companies like Google and Microsoft took the research to new levels. For example, Microsoft used readability research to create Verdana, a font designed to be legible with then-low resolution screens. Of course, the advertising and direct-mail industries had been conducting design research for decades to enhance sales. In short, you can’t pretend to be a competent designer, webmaster, or editor in this day and age without understanding quantitative readability research.
If there’s anyone who cares about effective graphic design, it’s direct-mail experts and fundraisers like Brooks. Brooks devotes about one-quarter of his book to the “design of fundraising”—how to use graphics to improve response rates. If folks can’t read your pitch because of poor design, all the words you write won’t make a difference. “It doesn’t matter how great a piece looks if it’s hard to read,” he says. He deflates designs that make the designer feel good, but make the reader toss the communication because it’s just too much work to figure out.
I am a book publicist and President of Westwind Book Marketing, a public relations and marketing firm that has a special knack for working with authors to help them get all the publicity they deserve and more. I work with bestselling authors and self-published authors promoting all types of books, whether it's their first book or their 15th book. I’ve handled publicity for books by CEOs, CIA Officers, Navy SEALS, Homemakers, Fitness Gurus, Doctors, Lawyers, and Adventurers. My clients have been featured by Good Morning America, FOX & Friends, CNN, ABC News, New York Times, Nightline, TIME, PBS, LA Times, USA Today, Washington Post, Woman's World, and Howard Stern.
When I
arrange for my clients to do a radio or podcast interview, some sell books,
while others do not. Why is that?
In many cases it’s the little things said during an interview that make people
want to buy that book. That’s why Media
training is important, because what good is landing an interview if you can’t get
the listener/viewer to take action and buy the book? If you take your
interviews seriously then read this book. Besides learning tips and techniques
you’ll gain confidence which is an important element of any
interview. This book is for anyone who is planning on getting media
coverage including: Authors, C-Suite Execs, Politicians, and Sports
Figures.
The author
Jess Todtfeld worked as a national TV-News Producer at NBC, ABC and FOX News.
He coached guests on how to look and sound good for years. Now he brings that
experience to his…
Strategies for Getting the Most From TV, Print, Radio, Internet & Social Media Opportunities. The most up to date media training book on the market. The idea of Media is more than just TV, Print, and Radio. Media now includes social media interviews, Skype, Periscope, Facebook Live, Blog interviews. It means Leveraging Traditional and Internet Media. All are important. Includes “Media Training Quick Start” Free Audio Download “Jess Todtfeld is a media training expert.” —The Washington Post
