Creative Leaps: 10 Lessons in Sucessful Advertising Inspired at Saatchi & Saatchi

Rating:
Summary: Don't Make Your Advertising Look Like Everyone Else's
Review: That's the message I delightfully took away from this absolutely wonderful, well written and very unique book. But alas, there is so much more.

As a proud member of the advertising club, I have long believed in stirring the pot and not looking like everyone else. But I've never read a book that presented it so eloquently as Creative Leaps by Michael Newman.

Newman tells it like it is about clients who butt in and create more problems than they help solve. Ditto for others who involve themselves in the creative process. He shows by demonstration how to create ads that work, that stand out and that sell like hell.

I also admit that, even with some thirty years of solid experience under my belt, I got some new (to me) and very helpful ideas. This book was worth twice what I paid for it.

I highly recommend this book to anyone in advertising, especially copywriters and creative directors. But also to anyone who might hire an ad agency or copywriter. It will help them to understand the creative process and to appreciate it more; to allow their creatives more freedom and to get the hell out of the way.

In fact, this book is totally different from any book about advertising or copywriting I've ever read and I totally love it. It will stay in my personal library. (No, I won't be selling it on Amazon like I do most of my books.) It will get read again and again and used as a reference for years to come.

Highly recommended.

Susanna K. Hutcheson
Owner & Creative Director
Powerwriting.com LLC

Rating:
Summary: Packed with Knowledge!
Review: This may be one of the best books about creativity, brands and advertising ever written. Author Michael Newman's long, successful tenure with Saatchi and Saatchi, one of the most innovative ad firms in the world, is itself impressive. He knows how to get attention in a market where attention is a scarce resource. His so-called "ten lessons in effective advertising," really ten ideas about creativity, are unnecessary devices, probably a framework forced on a good book by an unimaginative editor. Read this book instead for the chrestomathy of quotations from literary and artistic innovators and thinkers. Read it for the asides, the tangents, the advertising war stories and the rambles. Read it for the shocking ads that push past the bounds of what anyone would consider acceptable. We recommend you read it for pleasure and for all these reasons; you'll get a lot more than ten lessons.