Truth in Advertising: A Novel

Like the novel "E" by Matt Beaumont this fictional book is set in the advertising business, but "Truth in advertising" also deals with some serious issues.

Finbar Dolan is lost and lonely, had feet so cold he called off a wedding, and now has to call off his vacation to write and edit a super bowl spot about diapers in record time. Then things get worse. His once abusive father falls ill, his siblings do not intend to visit, and just what in the hell is Finbar really doing with his life? Shilling diapers!

This is not the trailer for the book.

Bill Bernbach's Book: A History of Advertising That Changed the History of Advertising

In A History of Advertising That Changed the History of Advertising Bob Levenson will show you that the simple rules: "Tell the truth", "Make it interesting" and to top it off "show it in a different way" is all you really need to make a great ad.

You don't have to be Jewish to love Levy's. What idiot changed the Chivas Regal bottle again? Lemon. Think small.

This illustration:

This book is a treasure of images and advertising wisdom that still rings true. You should have it. It's pretty much a must have for anyone in advertising.

Joe La Pompe: 100 Visual Ideas, 1000 Great Ads

This is a book you need to stuff in every xmas christmas stocking that belongs to an adgrunt or a student of advertising. It does just what it says on the tin, it'll show you one hundred visual ideas and one thousand (often great) ads. Like Nouveau? Or not, Joe La Pompe's previous book, and his website, this book is full of twin ads. Triplets, quadruplets and octuplets too. But only in a slight visual common note, the ideas differ.

Creative Mischief

Those who follow @Davetrott on twitter can't help but notice that he retweets anyone who speaks of his new book: Creative Mischief. It might be borderline spammy but it's often funny. People take friendly jabs at Dave, @ASheldrick (Andrew Sheldrick) just tweeted "@davetrott Like the bloody opera singer and eastern European mongooses, your incessant Creative Mischief plugs have worked. Well played sir."

Want to have a peek inside the book to see if you should pick it up? Adland is here to serve!

The Ubiquitous Persuaders

George Parker, our favorite crusty curmudgeon behind adscam, has written another book. Writing Madscam (Kindle version) and The Ubiquitous Persuaders wasn't enough, George still has a lot on his mind. He needs to confess. What could he have to confess about that you haven't read in his blog already? Dearie me, lots. Below is a sample from chapter 2, where George reveals he worked on Mr Whipple! (Now I wan't to see George and Luke thumbwrestle over a wee dram.)

Thirty Rooms To Hide In: Insanity, Addiction, and Rock 'n' Roll in the Shadow of the Mayo Clinic

Most of us weren't blessed with a perfect childhood. Some of us developed self-defense gallows humor as defense, and Luke Sullivan is one of them. He explains:

I often describe the books story as “The Shining, but … funnier.” It's the story of growing up with my five brothers in a big house in Minnesota back in the days of Eisenhower and Kennedy. Yet even with winters raging outside and our father raging within, our mother's protection allowed us to have a wildly fun, thoroughly dysfunctional time growing up.

Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture

Thanks to Carrie McLaren I got myself a copy of the Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture as seen here on the left, posing on a pile of sick bags with genuine falafal fat stains on it. (Yes, I have collected several hundred sick bags, if you haven't noticed by now, all signs point to me being a packrat on my way to rivaling the Collyer brothers)

If you have been an avid reader of StayFree magazine like myself, don't worry there's fresh data in here to feast on mixed in with some of their best articles. If you've never read StayFree magazine, it's a bit like adbusters. Sure the authors bemoan the advertising seeping into every pore of our culture, but at the same time they are fascinated by it, armed with wit and plenty of research. Those who have followed adland for as long as I have written it will find ad creep and other phenomena as familiar faces in here, all helping to paint a bigger picture of what advertising and consumer culture is doing to our society as a whole. The whole book is funny, subversive and eye-opening - if you've had them closed that is.

Nouveau ? (French Edition)

Joe La Pompe, the anonymous French guy who has been publishing twin ads on the web for almost as long as I have been Badlanding ads, has published a book. Alas, it's in French. But even if you don't know French, you can enjoy the ad twins anyway.

Since I can't really read French, not properly anyway, I figured that my review of the book should not be a written one. Here's my chat on Badlanders in general, and how to avoid them.

My neat little automagick link to Amazon widget is not built for french Amazon and I'm forced to link a US-available related book just to make this post work, here is a hardcoded link to the Joe La Pompe book that I'm actually talking about: Nouveau ? (Broché)

Adland: Searching for the Meaning of Life on a Branded Planet

"With a unique blend of humor and insight, Othmer guides us through this rapidly changing business and lets us see the direction in which it is headed. A must read for any student of advertising."
-- Rick Boyko, Director, VCU Brandcenter

"Advertising is an industry like any other, except it changes our planet daily. James Othmer, one of my favorite writers, takes you inside that world and makes the people and places real. You can dislike these guys, but you can't ignore them. They make sure of that."
  --Seth Godin, author, TRIBES

"I've been in advertising more than twenty years and spent countless hours trying to tell people how insane and hilarious and exciting and pointless and fascinating it all is. Now all I have to do is hand them this book."
-Jamie Barrett,
Creative Director/Partner Goodby Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco

"Othmer's struggle to do the next right thing in a business predicated on greed, lust, envy and sloth makes for an enlightening
as well as entertaining read."
                                                                    -Steffan Postaer
                                                                    Chairman & Chief Creative Officer, 
                                                                    Euro RSCG Chicago

ABC3D

I want this book pretty dang bad, ABC3D is as much a work of art as it is a pop-up book - each letter moves and some turn into other letters when you manipulate them, like C which turns into D with a snap. Bring your budding typographer up right, have them practice their ABC's with this book. Or simply treat your inner child to a brilliantly (and stylishly) executed book idea.

Marion Bataille is graphic and book designer who lives in Paris. The footage shows a hand-made mock-up of the actual book which will be published 14th Oct. 2008. In stores soon, folks! (You can pre-order at Amazon if you, like me, can't wait!)

Branding Only Works on Cattle: The New Way to Get Known (and drive your competitors crazy)

I haven't read the book yet, hence it's unrated (if you have read it feel free to share your views). But I did have the opportunity to ask Jonathan Salem Baskin Why did you write "Branding only works on cattle"? the start of a whole new conversation about branding. He replied:

Advertising Design and Typography

When I first spotted this book, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. I'm a total sucker for those heavy hard cover tomes of design that you can read cover to cover and then flip through over and over and over again. This is exactly that kind of book, it's jam packed with over 1,500 advertising examples that reinforce the message Alex is trying to get across.

Hey, Whipple, Squeeze This: A Guide to Creating Great Advertising (Adweek Magazine)

A lot has changed since the first edition of the now staple creative diet book "Hey Whipple, Squeeze Tthis", not just that Dick Wilson who played Mr Whipple has gone to squeeze the big fluffy clouds in the sky at the grand age of 91. There's also the galloping development of the web and the myriad of new media areas. So how does the grand old classic "idea" apply to these new solutions? Don't worry, Luke knows.

“Luke Sullivan writes just about as relevant an advertising read as you can get. It’s a perfect lesson in advertising for newcomers – and a familiar and highly painful reminiscence for those of us entrenched in this noble and often crazy profession.”
–Lee Clow, Chairman, TBWA/Chiat, Chief Creative Officer Worldwide
“This is a business that is changing like crazy, but Sullivan’s advice is timeless.”
–Mike Hughes, President, Creative Director, The Martin Agency
“Luke’s reflections on the advertising industry make me wish I could do it all over again. Except for that ‘scab’ story in Chapter 10.”
–Bob Barrie, Barrie D’Rozario Murphy

Lets do an excerpt. My favorite way to check out a book is to slap it open and read a bit. If I fancy it, I buy it. The third edition of this book doesn't just have two new chapters but old chapters have been updated as well as the examples were getting a little dusty. Check out chapter eight inside for your test read.

God Explained in a Taxi Ride

The man who always said "God is in the details" has lost religion and thus put out a book on the subject. A book short enough to read in one single cab ride sitting. A book which has it's own myspace profile. A book full of those little brilliant napkin scribbles that'll never happen.

Whatever You Think, Think the Opposite

Here's another pep talk for you special snowflakes who need someone to remind you to keep your opinions and your backbone, despite what the adgame might be doing to you. Paul Arden delivers his usual distilled smarts in his second book, despite the fact that he claims he can't write. He makes up for this by writing a lot of short sentences and hitting the return key way too often. His books are to young misunderstood adgrunts what the little black poetry book is to Emo kids. If you know a sulking creative at your office, this might be the right gift for them.

I used to commision a lot of photography.
Consequently, people weere keen to show me their work.
99 percent of portfolios I saw were of a very high standard.
But 98 percent of them contained pictures I had seen before.
Obviously not the same subject or composition, but I had the general impression that I was not seeing anything new.

Cutting Edge Advertising: How to Create the World's Best for Brands in the 21st Century

As a cutting edge communicator, you need to know what is happening. You need to understand the changes. You need to see how they will impact on your own creative thinking process, because they will.

Strategies and briefs

The joke goes something like this: a copywriter and an account director were visiting a client in Paris. The copywriter asked the account director how to get to the client's office, and the account director handed him a map of Europe.

Too often, conventional agency methodologies produce strategies and briefs which are meaningless. Strategy is probably the most abused word in advertising.

A strategy is not a request to produce a campaign. It should be the blueprint for the campaign, the path through the mine field.

Get Smashed!: The Staggering Story of the Men Who Made the Adverts that Changed Our Lives

For those who are already pining for next season of Mad Men, why don't you dive head first into the golden years of UK advertising, the 60's, 70's and 80's. Back when men were alcoholics, women never climbed above the title of secretary, and all paychecks for creatives were insanely huge.

Little 1

I can't be the only adgrunt who's procreated, so humor me here for a sec while I review a childrens book for wee little adgrunts-to-be. Did you know that Ann Rand wrote children's books, four of which were illustrated by her husband Paul? Start your little artist off right with some well designed classics I say.

In Little 1 we learn basic addition by following the number one around, in rhyming rhythmic verse no less. Don't worry, it might be lonely being the Little 1 but it has a happy ending - and great artwork.

Little 1 looked like a stick

It's Not How Good You Are, Its How Good You Want to Be: The World's Best Selling Book

"Everybody probably does want to be good but not everybody are prepared to make the sacrifices it takes. To some people being nice, to be liked is important. There is equal merit in that too. But you must not confuse being good with being liked. There may be not one person in this room that truly wants to be great. Most of you have come here for a solution. The way to become good. I have to tell you that I have no such solution. I can't teach you anything. I can tell you, but you won't hear me. The only way to learn is through your own experiences and mistakes. There is no instant solution. But I can offer some guidelines that have helped me."

Ogilvy on Advertising

From "Adcult USA" and "Oglivy On Advertising"
about Subliminal Advertising.
"ADCULT USA"

By James B. Twitchell
Where's The Beef?
The subliminal explanation of Advertising