The Business Of Advertising

This study provides an examination of the marketing technique of brand building. It covers aspects of brand management, brand equity, new and mature brands and extends the concept to new areas such as political marketing, green marketing and the arts.

The process of producing goods and services is relatively easy to recognize as socially beneficial. But television ads? Telemarketers? Jingles? Junk mail? It is popular to view these commercial activities as inherently wasteful or manipulative, marginally informative or entertaining, at best. In Selling the Dream, John Hood takes the provocative stand that advertising images and sales pitches are actually part of the goods and services themselves, delivering an essential component of the consumer's experience. As such, they are inextricably linked to the basic tenets of the free-market system, and, in the boldest of terms, Hood argues that commercial communication is morally consistent with the principles of our democratic society, including freedom of choice, competition, and innovation. Tracing the history of advertising from Ancient Roman times to the present, he offers a colorful account of advertising in its cultural context and addresses such controversial issues as the promotion of harmful and immoral products (such as alcohol and tobacco), marketing to children, the role of advertising in service industries such as health care and education, and the impact of the Internet and other new media on the conduct of commerce. In the process, he offers a compelling perspective on advertising and its essential role in business, communication, and popular culture.

Selected by Choice Magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title Originally published in 1998. Drawing on both documentary and pictorial evidence, Pamela Walker Laird explores the modernization of American advertising to 1920. She links its rise and transformation to changes that affected American society and business alike, including the rise of professional specialization and the communications revolution that new technologies made possible. Laird finds a fundamental shift in the kinds of people who created advertisements and their relationships to the firms that advertised. Advertising evolved from the work of informing customers (telling people what manufacturers had to sell) to creating consumers (persuading people that they needed to buy). Through this story, Laird shows how and why—in the intense competitions for both markets and cultural authority—the creators of advertisements laid claim to "progress" and used it to legitimate their places in American business and culture.

""Better Living": Advertising, Media, and the New Vocabulary of Business Leadership, 1935-1955 is a history of how big business learned to be both entertaining and persuasive when talking to the public. Examining the years from the Depression to postwar prosperity, "Better Living" follows the dissemination of a politically competitive claim of "more," "new," and "better" in industry and in life. Beginning with the changes in business-government relations during the New Deal, this study looks at the ways in which politically active corporations and their leaders learned how to speak - at a time when speaking was not enough." "Using archival sources such as the NBC, Ford Motor Company, DuPont, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt collections, William L. Bird, Jr., establishes the importance of industrial films and their role in public relations and employee relations, as well as the use of dramatic radio productions in corporate public relations. The author examines the interplay between general mass radio and print advertising, radio program sponsorship and scriptwriting, sponsored motion pictures and television entertainment, as well as exhibitions and industrial fairs and the role these media played in shaping ideas about American business and political and cultural institutions in this country for the decades to come." --Book Jacket.

Here is the perfect book for entrepreneurs and small business owners who want to know how to create effective advertising on an affordable budget. Persuasive Advertising for Entrepreneurs and Small Business Owners shows you how to plan and execute money-making advertisements and commercials--on a workable budget. Jay Granat, an experienced marketing professional and ad man, provides readers with a practical understanding of advertising principles, media selection, copywriting, consumer behavior, and persuasive advertising methods in promotional efforts. These principles have important implications, and Jay Granat shows you how to utilize them and stay within your means. Successful cases from across the media--television, print, direct mail, radio, transit, and public relations, representing construction, law, medicine, publishing, retail businesses, restaurants, and others--highlight various prosperous approaches to persuasive advertising. Written specifically for entrepreneurs and small business owners, Granat’s book is the first to explain how to use persuasive tactics and strategies. Ideal for established small business owners and those starting such a venture, this manual makes affordable advertising an easier step on the path to success. In addition to analyzing many aspects of advertising, this manual outlines appropriate networking and public relations strategies for entrepreneurs and small business owners. Granat teaches you how to construct money-making advertising and to recognize when your sales messages are effective and when the messages need to become more persuasive. To help illustrate the power of effective sales messages, he includes examples of his own advertising successes and failures. You will be better equipped to foresee when your own advertising campaigns are more likely to succeed or more likely to fail and how to reverse a failing campaign. Descriptions of the advantages and disadvantages of each advertising medium assist with the question of how to construct effective and persuasive selling messages for specific media. Whether you are looking for advice on how to plan a marketing/advertising campaign, ways to familiarize yourself with each medium available and select a medium to carry your messages, or how to use mind-set advertising, you will find it in Persuasive Advertising for Entrepreneurs and Small Business Owners. This abundance of useful information is ideal for copywriters, brand managers, entrepreneurial institutes, business professors, communications professionals, readers of Inc., Success, and Entrepreneur, advertising and marketing students, and of course, entrepreneurs and small business owners.

Advertising at War challenges the notion that advertising disappeared as a political issue in the United States in 1938 with the passage of the Wheeler-Lea Amendment to the Federal Trade Commission Act, the result of more than a decade of campaigning to regulate the advertising industry. Inger L. Stole suggests that the war experience, even more than the legislative battles of the 1930s, defined the role of advertising in U.S. postwar political economy and the nation's cultural firmament. She argues that Washington and Madison Avenue were soon working in tandem with the creation of the Advertising Council in 1942, a joint effort established by the Office of War Information, the Association of National Advertisers, and the American Association of Advertising Agencies. Using archival sources, newspapers accounts, and trade publications, Stole demonstrates that the war elevated and magnified the seeming contradictions of advertising and allowed critics of these practices one final opportunity to corral and regulate the institution of advertising. Exploring how New Dealers and consumer advocates such as the Consumers Union battled the advertising industry, Advertising at War traces the debate over two basic policy questions: whether advertising should continue to be a tax-deductible business expense during the war, and whether the government should require effective standards and labeling for consumer products, which would render most advertising irrelevant. Ultimately the postwar climate of political intolerance and reverence for free enterprise quashed critical investigations into the advertising industry. While advertising could be criticized or lampooned, the institution itself became inviolable.

Much has been written about the men and women who shaped the field of advertising, some of whom became legends in the industry. However, the contributions of African-American women to the advertising business have largely been omitted from these accounts. Yet, evidence reveals some trailblazing African-American women who launched their careers during the 1960s Mad Men era, and went on to achieve prominent careers. This unique book chronicles the nature and significance of these women’s accomplishments, examines the opportunities and challenges they experienced and explores how they coped with the extensive inequities common in the advertising profession. Using a biographical narrative approach, this book examines the careers of these important African-American women who not only achieved managerial positions in major mainstream advertising agencies but also established successful agencies bearing their own names. Based on their words and memories, this study reveals experiences which are intriguing, triumphant, bittersweet and sometimes tragic. These women’s stories comprise a vital part of the historical narrative on women and African-Americans in advertising and will be instructive not only to scholars of advertising and marketing history but to future generations of advertising professionals.

Beard's Humor in the Advertising Business offers a concise yet thorough exploration of how advertising humor works. As one of advertising's most frequently used tactics, humor is an admittedly complicated topic. Supported with dozens of the world's funniest ads, insights from creative strategists and artists, and decades of research, Humor in the Advertising Business surveys the whimsical side of modern advertising. Great as a supplemental text in Advertising Principles, Copywriting, and Advertising Strategy courses.