Advertising Books

I must admit I am prejudiced. Luther Brock wrote the first professional sales letter for me. It started my business and is used to this day. That is 36 years later. I have used dozens of ideas from this book, because I know Luther knows what he is talking about.

Dean Wright
mailordman@aol.com

I speak around the world on lead generation and marketing strategy. Luther did an outstanding job crafting "Sales Lead-Getting Model Letter Book" to give you a roadmap on how to master composing Lead Generation Letters.

There is no other resource I can think of where you can "easily perfect" your lead generation letter strategy.

Luther gives you step-by-step plan that anyone can follow in their quest to excel at marketing their products or services with powerful letters.

Joe Heller, Trust Cycle Selling

I recently switched fields from direct in-home sales to an inside B2B Sales rep (not telemarketing!) and this book has been a great read as well as a fountain of ideas and creativity!

The author offers sound advice on how to create rapport with the person on the other end of the phone. This is difficult since we cannot (yet anyway) see the person we're speaking with. You read in modern sales manuals about matching or mirroring body positions and postures yet few to none of these guru taught books say squat about how to do this over the phone! Enter Sharon Drew Morgan to the rescue!

Typical face-to-face communication is 7% word selection, 38% tone and inflecton and 55% BODY LANGUAGE. However when you're on the phone, Morgan points out that when you throw out the Body Language, your voice tone and inflection is 83% and word choice is a mere 17% important!

Morgan also offers some solid strategies to get and maintain rapport and she explains the "We Space" concept quite well. If you work in inside sales such as advertising, catalogs, etc., this book will be a beneficial boon for you to get, study and apply.

This book is a breakthrough with doing business over the phone. It is informative and detailed in the productivity that it can achieve. I keep the book nearby when I make calls and use the references constantly. My clients now buy from me instead of me selling. This book is a must for all who are in the search for a competitive edge.

This is one of the best resources I've found for Search Marketing. It's easy to understand so you don't have to be web-savvy to really dig in and start getting results. It provides realistic ways of managing search campaigns that are fact-based and not just the typical hot air theories.

Jerry has written numerous publications on internet / search engine marketing, but this is his best piece yet. There's no fluff "get rich quick" scams, just practical, solid information on effectively managing your pay per click campaigns. Utilizing his recommendations have already increased my campaign performance!

When I was a kid I made my Mom read this story to me over and over. It was a classic with my family. This is one of those books that is just fun for everyone.

Larry was a very believable character and the situation he found himself in made me smile. Larry was scared he would lose respect from his friends by being in an underwear commercial, but he gained it from all. This was a perfect book for me - a 9 year old, 3rd grade girl.

The message to be made to companies...to survive in today's highly competitive marketplace, everyone, not just the sales department,from top to bottom, must be selling to help the salesforce do its job.


Selling Machine proposes that the whole company focus on the customer. The book wraps up with emphasis on the value of teamwork and how teams can enhance customer focus.

Reading the books written by Miller, Heiman and Tuleja (The New Conceptual Selling, Successful Large Account Management and The New Strategic Selling) changed the way I looked at complex sales processes completely and increased sales success of the companies I work(ed) for dramatically. Their books (and excellent training courses) represent a customer-centric vision rarely to be found in other writings (and training courses) on how to sell.

The Selling Machine gives an excellent overview of the Miller-Heiman philosophy and goes one step further by propagating that all employees should share responsibility in enhancing revenues by supporting the sales force. A must-read for everybody in an organisation - be it sales or marketing, administration or reception desk, CEO or his/her driver. All who understand that in the end it is the customer who is paying your salary. So better make sure all people on board are helping to get sales in.

Especially a good read for people who want to get acquainted with Miller-Heiman's work or who just think they have not enough time to read all the other books I mentioned.

This book is out of print and therefore should be very cheap. You'll get a bang for buck with this one!

I am an interior design major and applied the tecniques that are in this book into my marketing plan for my business upon graduation. The book is very expensive; but offers easy to understand selling stradgies and "how-to" build quality partnerships. You can use an interactive web site to study each chapter which is very useful as well!

Mel's little book of shortcuts to more effective/efficient advertising is chock full of insight for client and agency personnel, alike. It's a soup to nuts smorgasbord of easy to digest sound bites: Positioning, creative development, copy testing, full-up production, media planning, hazards to avoid, stuff everyone in our business should know (and/or be reminded of). Definitely worth the effort.

Despite the fact that I've spent 45 years in advertisiing, it's never too late to find out that there are some great shortcuts. Thank you Mel for the obvious!

This is a colorful and attractive book that tells you everything you may ever need to know about creating multimedia presentations using SMIL 2.0, the second release of the World-Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language Recommendation. SMIL is an XML language for creating multimedia presentations, integrating media, temporal control and interactivity. A SMIL presentation can contain a combination of any types of media. SMIL itself is media "agnostic", and includes most media types by referencing their URL's rather than embedding them in the SMIL file itself.

The authors, Bulterman and Rutlege, are respected multimedia researchers and were key contributors to both the SMIL 1.0 and SMIL 2.0 Recommendations. They were personally involved in drafting and testing a significant portion of the standard, and the company that Bulterman used to lead, Oratrix, developed one of the first full implementations of the SMIL 2.0 language, Grins. So these guys know what they are talking about.

While the W3C SMIL 2.0 Recommendation (http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/REC-SMIL2-20050107/) is primarily written for SMIL implementors and XML language designers incorporating SMIL features into their XML-based language, the book is written for multimedia content authors. The book begins with an overview of SMIL 2.0, with six example presentations that show how SMIL can be used, some history, and a guide to the organization of the SMIL 2.0 standard. The next chapter gives a brief but useful introduction to SMIL 2.0 code including the major components of the language: structure, media, layout, timing, linking, and control.

Further chapters go into each of these areas in much greater depth, explaining all of the options and features in each component (terms module in SMIL 2.0) of the language. And there are many! To support fully featured, interactive, and attractive multimedia features that allow infinite flexibility in the look and feel of a multimedia presentation, SMIL 2.0 has a ton of features and options. In addition to the components already listed, there is animation (my favorite), transition effects, media clipping, advanced layout, extended control, and metadata. Bulterman and Rutlege do a good job of presenting a lot of material in an organized and attractive manner, with lots of examples.

By and large, the features in SMIL 2.0 are straightforward and intuitive to use, However, as is true in any standard developed to meet the needs of many separate groups (SMIL 2.0, for example), SMIL 2.0 is a large language with some potential pitfalls, and there are some also "doozers" and "gotchas". By necessity, the SMIL timing model is complex. While usually intuitive, in some particular cases the timing elements and attributes can interact in initially surprising ways. For another example, there are two kinds of SMIL XML for representing transitions, and all transitions may not be available in all platforms. The authors calmly guide the reader through all this. Backward compatability between versions of SMIL, including the oddly named 'skip-content' attribute is another complex subject clearly presented.

This book is both more comprehensive and much more attractively presented than any other book on SMIL that I have seen. The "insiders" view of SMIL that authors have is used to round out the explanations and rationale for things to good effect. Overall this is a great book for any multimedia content developer who is using or considering using SMIL 2.0. It will also be useful to SMIL implementation developers as another source of information when reading and implementing the recommendation documents. Lastly it should be of interest to students studying multimedia as an in-depth guide to a specific comprehensive multimedia presentation architecture.

Aaron M. Cohen
Chairman of the W3C Synchronized Multimedia Working Group (produced the SMIL 2.0 Recommendation)

This is a remarkable book, and by far the most authoritative guide available for the SMIL languages. It serves a broad audience, and combines a readable style with complete expertise in the subject matter.

For authors, the book provides an easy-to-understand explanation of the language principles and syntax. Many useful examples illustrate the features, and provide useful authoring templates. Bulterman and Rutledge's experience with multimedia authors and authoring comes through in the many tips and hints for addressing real-world issues and avoiding potential pitfalls. All examples are provided online as well, along with demos and other resources.

For the serious student or implementer, the book provides detailed explanations of the underlying models for layout, timing and animation. These sections benefit from the combined experience of the book's authors as leading members of the W3C standards group that developed the SMIL languages. Their understanding of the details is clearly beyond that of most other authors on this subject.

The book design itself is interesting and fun. Graphics in the margins mark the chapters, with key chapters featuring flipbook-like graphic "animations". It has a comfortable layout and organization and an excellent index. If I have a complaint, it is that I do not find the graphics summarizing syntax features to be very intuitive. Fortunately, the text and examples provide sufficient syntax reference.

Authors of web multimedia as well as academics and professionals integrating or implementing SMIL language features will find this an invaluable addition to their reference bookshelf - I strongly recommend it.

This is the second guide I've bought from Wetfeet (the other was Careers in entertainment), and so far, they haven't let me down. The editorial team is top-notch over there. they really do a good job at helping me visualize and place myself within specific jobs as well as understand the full spectrum of what's possible for someone with my background (in PR) to cross-over into in terms of job roles. i'm now pretty sure the Ad world is for me. thanks a bunch for boiling all of the info floating around out there down into a succinct guide that gives me the most important stuff to prepare me for my interviews.

I really enjoyed reading this informative guide. Not only was it packed with helpful information, but it was written in a fun, upbeat style that didn't put me to sleep and got me really excited about my decision to change careers.

The vocab section was a great way to get accustomed to the industly lingo. I'll sound like a pro by the time my interviews come up. The company profiles provided a good start for company research and the job descriptions helped me get a good idea of where I want to be.

This is a great buy for anyone thinking about a career in advertising.

One of the best books about media and its evolving role in tapping into our emotions about political candidates. Genuinely funny and sophisticated examinations here. But, Ed Diamond is a saint. Is Steven Bates, Satan Starr's author the handmaid of the Devil?

One of the best books about media and its evolving role in tapping into our emotions about political candidates. Genuinely funny and sophisticated examinations here. But, Ed Diamond is a saint. Is Steven Bates, Satan Starr's author the handmaid of the Devil?