Ordinary Advertising
And How to Avoid It Like The Plague
by
Book Cover & Preview Text
Formats
Book Details
About the Book
The problem with most advertising isn’t that it’s bad. The problem is it’s ordinary. And while it may be perfectly fine for some things to be ordinary (after all, most things are), it’s not okay for advertising. Because only extraordinary advertising attracts attention, makes a firm connection with its audience and returns great value for the money spent on it.
So why isn’t more advertising extraordinary? It’s not because there aren’t enough people who can do it. Nor is it because clients don’t want it. It’s because too many people involved in the selection of advertising have had little if any training in how to do so. And that’s what this book provides.
Starting with the basic impediments to extraordinary advertising—like poor listening and even worse research—this book lays out the cardinal principles for getting to better than ordinary advertising. How to get a feel for what your audience wants to hear and know, not what you want to say. The critical role “truth” plays in extraordinary advertising. And how to develop a strategy that creates an open field for original thinking instead of box that constrains it.
Using many instructive examples (and more than a few amusing anecdotes), the book covers traditional positioning and how to put it to good use, along with a new and highly effective approach the author has dubbed “Zone” marketing.
Also included is a revealing look at “integrated marketing” and how disintegrated it largely remains. Some valuable insights into the semiotics of advertising communications, the role of new media and the potential impact of media killers like digital video recorders and since no book on advertising would be complete without it: a careful look at that much talked about but little understood concept: Branding.
For anyone involved in the selection of advertising or anyone whose business success is to some degree driven by advertising, this book will provide a straightforward, but highly untextbook-like guide to identifying, championing and understanding extraordinary advertising. Which, at the end of the day, is the only kind worth investing in.