Tired of the same old books about advertising?
How Marketing Ate Our Culture…(hope that got your attention) is the subtitle of a new book by Terry O'Reilly and Mike Tennant called The Age of Persuasion (they also have a wonderful CBC Radio Show with the same name). It is a history of advertising from early print ads to YouTube marketing disasters by way of many very clever asides.
This is the very best kind of non-fiction. It makes you interested in a subject you didn't think you were interested in at all. Advertising surrounds us all the time but we don't think much about it unless we find it annoying. Terry O'Reilly says that, hard as it is to believe, advertisers really don't try to annoy us on purpose, they're just trying to break through the "ad clutter" (unsuccessfully, if we're annoyed). You'll find out what unwritten contract telemarketers are breaking, the lesson of Clark Gable's undershirt (not quite what you think), and how subliminal advertising works (it doesn't). In the endless struggle between the advertisers and the customers, knowledge is power!
One thought on “Tired of the same old books about advertising?”
You just made me want to read the book. Thanks!