The problem with most advertising isn't that it's bad. The problem is its ordinary. And while it may be perfectly fine for many things to be ordinary, (after all, most things are), it's not okay for advertising. Because only extraordinary advertising attracts enormous attention, makes a firm connection with its audience and returns a value far in excess of the amount invested in it. So why isn't more advertising extraordinary? It's not because clients don't want it, or because there's a shortage of people who can do it. It's because too few people involved in the selection of advertising have had much training in how to do so. Which is precisely what this book is meant to provide. 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 all extraordinary advertising. And how to develop a strategy that creates an open field for original thinking instead of a box that constrains it. Using many instructive examples, (and more than a few amusing anecdotes), this book covers traditional positioning and how to put it to 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, the impact of media killers such as DVRs and the like, and since no book on the subject of advertising would be complete without it, a very scrutinizing examination of that much talked about, but little understood concept: Branding. For anyone involved in the selection of advertising--new media or old--or anyone whose ultimate business success is to some degree, (usually large) driven by communications, 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 (to use a most ordinary, clichéd term) is the only kind worth investing in.
