Effective Advertising : Understanding When, How, and Why Advertising Works (Marketing for a New Century)

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating for lay people seeking to learn more
Review: Effective Advertising: Understanding When, How And Why Advertising Works is an absolute must-read for professional and aspiring advertisers and marketers. It very candidly and straightforwardly presents the theories, principles, and techniquest of advertising, including findings from marketing studies in the late twentieth century concerning advertising intensity, elasticity, frequency, content, and more. As fascinating for lay people seeking to learn more about the commercials that bombard daily life as it is for students and professionals making a living spreading word of their products, Effective Advertising is a thorough, no-nonsense explanation of the nuts and bolts of how messages can be spread and leave a mark on human psychology.

Rating:
Summary: 5 for content, 2 for style
Review: This book is full of extremely valuable information, but it's written in a very dense academic style. I wish the author had gotten a ghostwriter to help make it easy and enjoyable to read. It has far more meat than just about any advertising book I've read (and I've read a lot). What it lacks, ironically for a book about the business of communication, is the skill at communicating that. i.e. It's steak without the sizzle. What I would love the publishers to do for a second edition is: get a much better title, a much better cover (this one is appalling and boring), ask a good marketing/popular writer to make it palatable for the every day reader, and you might potentially have a hit on your hands. The content itself is first class.