Promotion Books

It's one of those books you don't want to put down until you are finished. It holds you captive from page one and doesn't let go of your soul until the last page. It's the story of a young orphan boy that gets a break in life and the trials and tribulations he goes through from boyhood to manhood as an arms dealer. A must for your library as you'll want to read it again!

Yes, this is a wonderful story, full of rich characterizations that leave you
hoping the story never ends. They don't write them like this anymore!!

This is my favorite book of all time. Fred Mustard Stewart develops characters like no other, and writes plots and storylines that are fantastic. It is extremely difficult to put this book down once you get into it. I would recommend this book to any reader. The reading is easy and very interesting. I believe everyone should read this book.

This book is a must read for anyone who likes books you can't put down. It's a riveting story about trials, and triumphs through life. The author has written it in such a way it'll catch your imagination from word one.

It's a terrificly told story about one mans' life from start to finish. From a trying childhood to an event filled life as a man. From being a child with feelings of abandonment to, an adventuresome youth to, a succesful man who clawed, and fought his way to the top.

This is a tale that practically everyone can relate to in some way. This is a book you'll keep in your collection for years to come.

This could be your health curriculum. Very age appropriate and fun. An excellent resource for all heath teachers new and experienced. I highly recommend this book.

What a great book.....I have used many ideas and/or lessons from the book in my classroom.

If you are a health teacher, a physical education teacher or anyone working with children or adolescents, you need to buy this book!!! The lessons are easy to use and the activities are creative and engaging. One of the best methods books I have ever used!

An absolute MUST for anyone who teaches health topics and needs to liven up his or her instruction. Dr. Whalen and her co-authors present "tried and true" ways to engage learners and get the content across in a way that engages and holds students accountable students during the learning process.

Dr. Patricia McDiarmid
Assistant Professor Health Education
Springfield College
Springfield, MA.

I read the book purely out of curiosity. I co-manage a high tech company so at first I was disappointed since none of the high tech companies are included in the book. But I started reading it anyway because I wanted to read what some of the famous companies like Caterpillar and UPS are doing to gain market-leadership. Although some of the company stories get to be tedious, most are useful and fun to read. And even though none is from a high tech company, it gave me ideas for my own business. Now whenever I am faced with a customer problem, I would be thinking of one or the other story to come up with my own innovative ways of solving the customer's problem and to meet his or her value requirements. Beyond the stories, what I found useful is the customer value framework the authors offer. At first, it looks deceptively basic and simple; but the more I thought about it, the more it seemed valuable. Its simplicity is a good thing. Authors claim that it is comprehensive - I am not sure yet, but so far every value creation activity I could think I could fit into the framework. And I could apply it to my company. Indeed the framework is applicable to any company in any industry. The book offers nothing in the way of quick-fix. And when you finish reading it, don't expect to run with excitement, eager to implement something. Rather, the book's framework gives you a template to use in long term, cool-headed, planning. It does not matter if you are a small business or a large business, and if you are a established company or a start up, the book's framework will be a handy tool for constantly thinking about various avenues of creating "unusual and complete" customer value.

I read the book purely out of curiosity. I co-manage a high tech company so at first I was disappointed since none of the high tech companies are included in the book. But I started reading it anyway because I wanted to read what some of the famous companies like Caterpillar and UPS are doing to gain market-leadership. Although some of the company stories get to be tedious, most are useful and fun to read. And even though none is from a high tech company, it gave me ideas for my own business. Now whenever I am faced with a customer problem, I would be thinking of one or the other story to come up with my own innovative ways of solving the customer's problem and to meet his or her value requirements. Beyond the stories, what I found useful is the customer value framework the authors offer. At first, it looks deceptively basic and simple; but the more I thought about it, the more it seemed valuable. Its simplicity is a good thing. Authors claim that it is comprehensive - I am not sure yet, but so far every value creation activity I could think I could fit into the framework. And I could apply it to my company. Indeed the framework is applicable to any company in any industry. The book offers nothing in the way of quick-fix. And when you finish reading it, don't expect to run with excitement, eager to implement something. Rather, the book's framework gives you a template to use in long term, cool-headed, planning. It does not matter if you are a small business or a large business, and if you are a established company or a start up, the book's framework will be a handy tool for constantly thinking about various avenues of creating "unusual and complete" customer value.

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ValueSpace? What is it? What does it do for my business?

We are constantly asked these questions since the book's release. They are best answered by us in the preface, excerpted below.

PREFACE

ValueSpace -we hold it in utmost admiration.

ValueSpace-it is to us the be-all and the end-all of all business activity; the only purpose of all businesses. It is the only justifiable goal of all reengineering, organizational renewal, entrepreneurship and corporate innovation. And it is the only path for sustained growth; for winning the battle for market leadership. It is the space where true market value is created. For shareholders; for employees; and, most of all, for customers. We present in this book a blueprint on how companies can build enduring ValueSpace for their customers.

This book is at the intersection of our two long-held obsessions: As university professors, we view ourselves as lifelong learners; and for decades, we have been students of customer behavior on the one hand and business organizations on the other. We have studied theories of customer behavior-indeed created some of them ourselves--, and for decades, we have observed, analyzed, and written about business processes, precepts, and practices. In this book, we bring these two streams together-our knowledge of customers and our knowledge of businesses. This is our ValueSpace for you, the reader: Uniquely in the current sea of business advice books, we combine the customer and business perspectives.

We set out to understand what constitutes value for the customer and how companies can create it. With financial support from the Marketing Science Institute (a Cambridge-based nonprofit research organization), .. we studied 11 Fortune's Most Admired Companies. ... Our framework, comprising the components of ValueSpace and its drivers, is quintessential-no matter what else you do or do not do, you must create these value components. Our framework is enduring-it is not the "project of the month"; long after the current fads have vanished, you must still build the value components we describe. Our framework is universal-it applies to all companies: manufacturing and service; small business or global enterprises, business-to-business or business-to-consumer; physical or digital; dot-com or not-com.

We intend this book to be a blueprint for thought as well as practice. We present conceptual framework to help you plan; we provide a self-audit form that you can use to assess your company's current standing in the ValueSpace; and we present case histories, stories of the most admired companies, and insights from executive interviews that you would find both inspirational and actionable. It is a hands-on guide to launching your journey into the customer ValueSpace.

Our own journey has been fascinating; we have learned a lot-from the Most Admired Companies we studied; from the executive interviews we did specifically for this research; and from thousands of conversations over the years with consumers, mangers, and corporate leaders just like yourselves. It is a pleasure and privilege to share with you our view of Customer ValueSpace, and our total fascination with it.

(End of Preface) * * *

VALUESPACE FOR BUSINESS EXECUTIVES

How You Can Use the Book:

Knowledge is the foundation for all strategy and sound executive action. This book will give you:

a. A Perspective: A framework for thinking about your customers' ValueSpace, and indeed about your business itself.

b. A Strategic Planning Tool. The book contains an Audit self-survey both for nine ValueSpace components and 40 driver processes. You can use this tool to assess your company's current standing and then plan action to move forward in the ValueSpace.

c. As an Account Planning Tool. For each major customer, you can identify the gaps in the ValueSpace you can fill.

d. As an Executive Training Tool. As a platform for Executive Training, the book can inform, guide, and frame the continuing education experiences in corporate universities and in-house Executive training centers.

Once you adopt the ValueSpace thinking, the potential to explore avenues of value creation are limited only by your creativity and vision.

* * * * * * *

SELECTED EXCERPTS

Value, not money, is the basic currency of all human interaction. When we meet someone, we try to quickly assess how long would it be worth our while to be talking to that person. If an incoming phone call shows up on our called ID, we promptly decide if we would gain anything by taking the call at that time. If we get 10 letters in the mail, we look through them and choose to open only those that we expect to contain some information of value to us. This is even more true for marketplace exchanges.... ...

Companies that invent new values such as these possess certain traits. They observe customers real close. They dig customer need to its essential core. And they keep their eyes on a singular target: creating far fetched new ValueSpace for the customer. These traits indeed lead a business to mold its own self-concept in the customer's image. Rosenbluth redefines the very nature of its business as "business interaction management." And 3M comes to view itself, instead of being a maker of masking tapes, abrasive papers, and adhesives, as a provider of bonding, protection, and masking solutions.....

This reinvention of oneself as a corporate being, this customer-centered adoption of a new self-identity, the constant contemplation of the customer desires -this is what it takes to invent unparalleled ValueSpace for the customer. This is what it takes to win the battle for market leadership. This is what it takes to thrive.

* * * * * * *

IN CONCLUSION

We hope you enjoy the book. We will certainly be grateful for your feedback. You can send it to us at BanMittal@MyValueSpace.com.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

A few years ago, I read a New York Times bestseller, The Discipline of the Market Leaders, by Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema. Since its publication, I have heard a lot of managers quoting from it. In this bestseller, authors Treacy and Wiersema describe three strategies: product leadership, operational excellence, and customer intimacy. My fellow executives translate these as product, price, and service, and we all generally agree that to compete, "You have to be good at two, and be excellent at the third."

Last week I read ValueSpace by Mittal & Sheth. It changed my interpretation of Treacy and Wiersema's book. I realized how wrong every manager's understanding of Treacy and Wiersema's book had been. The confusion is between the Marketspace and Valuespace. Treacy/Wiersema's book tells us WHAT market to compete in (Marketspace); Mittal/Sheth's book tells us HOW to compete in the chosen market (ValueSpace). Their discussion of this distinction in Chapter 12 was an eye-opener. They also do a great job of tying up the theme of their book with the themes of other business bestsellers, such as Tom Peter's In Search of Excellence and Collins and Porras' Built to Last.

I highly recommend this book to anyone concerned with business strategy. If you have read other bestsellers on business strategy, you can't afford to miss this one. I only wish the authors had made Chapter 12 as their first chapter. . My suggestion would be to read Chapter 12 first. Then the rest of the book would be doubly meaningful.

This is a nifty book. It givesa wide view of ways that a small business entrepreneur can use the Internet to market successfully. The dot.com craze may be over, but that doesn't mean that the Internet won't continue to be a long-term vital tool in marketing for small business. With this book, any budding or seasoned entrepreneur will gain a learn of get many wokrable strategies.

Get this book if you intend to use the Internet to market your business in
any way. It is loaded with marketing ideas and there are enough of them so
that any small business entrepreneur can benefit in some way. There are
lots of examples of people and businesses that have actually done what the
author recommends, and lots of web sites to visit as a follow up. I got
about 6 great ideas out of this book. Two or three would have made it
worthwhile.

I would love to read this book because I heard it was amazing, BUT Elephant Books sent me the wrong book. Now they will not return my phone calls or numerous emails, and they were done in good taste so I do not understand why they would not return my messages. Just wanted you all to know so you do not get shafted like I did. Have a great day!

Manufacturing is a combination of soft and hard skill. The soft-skill is about people and how to manage them. This skill is obvious in several text and business management book. The hard-skill, however, is quite rare. Fortunately, Wright combines it in nice -easy to read format.
The strong point of this book is "comprehensive". Wright composes his thought of manufacturing system today and projected to the future. All manufacturing processes are seamlessly combined from one chapter to another. The integration of CAD/CAM is also mentioned. In addition, his viewpoint of manufacturing system for biotechnology, nanotechnology and information technology are quite interesting -and practical.
If I have to use one book for manufacturing class, I would use this book for teaching. For anyone new to manufacturing process, this book is a must for your jorney to the manufacturing world.

This book is like a breath of fresh air - A totally new and innovative view of manufacturing. It was very different from the traditional boring and dry manufacturing texts I have been used to reading. The book takes a look not only at manufacturing processes but also other aspects like product development and business plans - parts I have not seen in any other textbook. To sum up, I would definitely recommend the book !

This book provides an excellent overview of manufacturing in the new economy. From the perspective of an entrepreneur in today's internet driven world, all aspects from product design to rapid prototyping and computer manufacturing are discussed in detail and with strong reference to the real world. In addition, conventional manufacturing processes like basic machining and metal forming, as well as fairly new industrial directions like biotechnology are outlined with an emphasis on the strong relationship between engineering and business. The book concludes with a realistic vision for the future of manufacturing, and therefore proves to be a 'must have' in the world of engineering and entrepreneurship.

Finally, someone uses more research-based information than personal opinion to discuss the field of sales. This book was extremely helpful and the author hit a home run. Hope there is a second book like the first.

The number is essentially unimportant. Canada could have focused on seven (out of respect to Covey) or on 14 or on 34 "sales traps." In fact, there are hundreds of incorrect or inappropriate actions and strategies undertaken by salespeople or a sales organization because of incomplete or false information, illogical thinking, "tradition," poor decision-making, and/or not knowing what they don't know. Canada brought to the writing of this book a wealth of real-world experience in sales and sales training. He also drew upon extensive published research (e.g. a sales research project sponsored by Xerox) as well as studies conducted by the Dartmouth Group, Ltd. and the Institute for Global Sales Studies. In the Introduction, Canada asserts that "It is not what sales and marketing people don't know that is most likely to significantly hurt their performance; it is what they think they know that turns out to be a partial truth, a fallacy, or a mistaken belief that affects their results more."

According to Canada, the most successful salespeople, sales teams, and sales organizations are guided and informed by six principles: Focus outside, get the most out of the best people, train effectively, create value, offer feedback and create opportunities for learning, and use the Internet and databases effectively. He illustrates each of these six by identifying and then examining 24 different sales traps, each of which violates one or more of the principles. He then explains how to avoid them. For example:

Sales Trap #6: Either Sales People Have It or They Don't

Action Points: Be patient, Give constructive feedback, and give consistent feedback that doesn't exclude anyone.

Sales Truth #6: Sales people are developed [in italics], not born [also in italics]

Canada uses this same format for the other sales traps, devoting a separate chapter to each of the 24. He provides brief annotations with each Action Point throughout the book and also inserts observations, suggestions, and examples so as to create a context for each combination of Sales Trap/Action Points/Sales Truth. He concludes with an Epilogue in which he shares his thoughts about the next generation of performance change programs, suggesting that there are two unique points that should be carefully considered when devising a program by which to move sales performance and sales results to the next level. First, performance change programs must incorporate a customer survey that is customized for the program, and performance change programs should also examine the success factors from the customer's perspective." Although Canada does not italicize the last four words, I would. "Second, the program must incorporate into each case study the 'best practices' of your top salespeople. In other words, we must leverage the insights of an organization's best people in order to help others within the company." I could not agree more, presuming to add that the aforementioned "best practices" would also be of substantial to those not directly involved in sales (e.g. receptionists, telephone operators, CSRs, accounting) who also have direct and frequent contact with customers.

After reviewing the 24, many readers will probably have a few sales traps to add to the list. Perhaps if enough readers share them with Canada (he is a member of the marketing faculty at the Kelley School of Business, Indiana University), he will accumulate enough new material for another book. My own rather extensive experience in sales and sales training suggests these troublemakers:

MISTAKE A: Negotiating Against Yourself (i.e. assuming what a customer can and cannot afford)

TRUTH A: Let the customer say "No."

MISTAKE B: Constantly "Cultivate" Customers

TRUTH B: Contact a customer only when there is a legitimate reason to do so.

MISTAKE C: Ask Lots of Questions

TRUTH C: Do your homework. Lots of it. Request only the answers you cannot be expected to know already.

MISTAKE D: Closing Skills Are Most Important

TRUTH D: More often than not, so-called "closing skills" work best when used to pre-qualify a prospect.

Although this book will be of great value to relatively inexperienced salespeople, especially to those without the safety nets and air cover of an established sales organization, I also think it will be of substantial value to sales managers and to peak performers who can so easily become entrapped by what Jim O'Toole refers to as "the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom." Probably the worst sales trap of all is to continue to think and sell the same way, day after day, and then expect better results. Even the most experienced of salespeople should constantly be challenging their own assumptions, premises, etc. about sales...but seldom do. Canada's book can guide and inform such a re-evaluation.

Especially for organizations with limited resources and a small sales force, Canada's book can serve as the basis of an especially effective sales training program. Larger organizations can also use it as the focal point of a workshop. Obviously, those who understand what the 24 sales traps are and why they are so dangerous are most likely to avoid them.

This is a fantastic book. It is so hard to find any books in the sales or marketing field that are actually based on facts versus opinions. If you like this book you should check out books by Neil Rackham.

Certified Career Management Coach and Nationally Certified Resume Writer Susan Britton Whitcomb presents 30 Day Job Promotion: Build a Powerful Promotion Plan in a Month, a no-nonsense guide to earning a promotion. From choosing the optimal time to begin one's promotion campaign, to learning how to respectfully demonstrate one's value to one's employer with proof of performance, to proven scripts for asking for a raise, to negotiating the best salary possible, and much more, 30 Day Job Promotion is packed cover to cover with useful tips, tricks, and techniques. 30 Day Job Promotion is also a consumable book, with blank lines for the reader to write down how he or she is doing. An excellent, user-friendly tool to improving one's career station. "It's all about value. To effectively negotiate an increase in salary, you must first understand your value... If necessary, speak in generalities, such as, 'I'm confident if you check the numbers you will find that significant progress was achieved.'"

This is a great self-help book. It has given me some new ways of thinking about the job search and how to promote myself. I would recommend this publicaiton to anyone who is job searching, thinking about transitioning their career, or wants to be promoted in their current situation. Excellent information here!
... L. Lebert/CEO

How much time did you invest strategizing for your last job promotion? If you're like most people, you probably figure (a) your work speaks for itself and (b) you're the best candidate for the job. That's not much of a strategy, and while it still might lead to a promotion, a better approach would be to use Susan Britton Whitcomb's 30-Day Job Promotion as a planning tool.

Be forewarned that you'll need to do a good deal of work to get the most out of this book. Then again, if you want to get that promotion, isn't it worth the effort to use a tool like this to lay out your plans? If nothing else it shows the promoting manager just how enthusiastic and committed you are to the new role.

One of my favorite elements in this book is a section called "The 10 Characteristics of Promotable People." Are you convinced you're truly promotable? If so, check yourself against this list and see how well you score. More importantly, learn your weaknesses and invest the time and energy required to become stronger across all 10 areas.

Here are some of the other headings and sections in this book that make it worth every penny: Mistakes to Avoid, How to Respond to a Posted Opening, 15 Common Roadblocks (to a promotion) and an entire chapter on Salary Negotiations. The last 30 pages of the book consist of real life success stories. Even though your situation is probably quite different from all the ones discussed, you'll find plenty of great lessons to be learned in this section.

Can you really get promoted in 30 days? Your mileage will vary, of course, but no matter what time frame you're working with, 30-Day Job Promotion is like having a career counselor right there by your side.

We recommend this book and its toolkit to our members, providing this summary of what 4D branding trains you to do:

>Profile 4 dimensional branding you need: lowest dimension "function" suits product & advertised models of brand execution, but inhibits top "spiritual" dimension that corporate and global brands need >Experience futurised 4D brands: capable of leading organisational change and interacting organisation-wide service of value >Simplify DNA of futurised brands - vision, mission, values, styling, positioning, flagship product - so that the company can live the brand once you've taken the essential Brand Code on tour across company >Refresh the 4D Brand by intranetting such exercises as : concocting brand recipe for every audience, creating a mental movie for being the best brand in the world >Know why most company brands are still far down the learning curve as organisms of the network economy, and how the ideology of 4D branding can help you futurise just ahead of the competition

4D Branding is currently one of the top 10 toolkits in our members catalogue of frameworks used by Brand Leaders

Chris Macrae...

In the face of a great deal of "No Logo" brand hostility, it's good to see a response which paves the way for brands with more sensitivity and imagination. Have to admit that I picked this up in Europe because I liked the cover, but 4D proved to be an engaging and useful guide to more emotional branding. More process than puff, this is the best of the recent cluster of branding books, and shows that branding demands a commitment to imagination, innovation, responsibiliy and values. As Brit, Richard Branson (a walking brand if ever I saw one) says in the Foreword, "It is easy to be cynical about such things, but much harder to be successful." 200 pages less so now. Gad shares an enthusiasm and coherent approach to this stuff with Jesper Junde, who wrote Corporate Religion (the orange book!).

Shaping and building brands is a central issue in design, and a key aspect of design management. Building brands effectively requires an appreciation of how customers - and potential customers - experience every aspect of the products and services we design. It also demands sensitivity to the complex system of physical, affective, and, cognitive issues involved in any product or service. This complexity is particularly subtle and important for products bundled with or supported by services, and for the hybrid service products that typify many offerings today.

Thomas Gad is a respected practitioner in the field of brand development. He proposes three conceptual models to use in building brands. The 4-D brand model is organized around the concept of Brand Mind Space. Gad's schema considers four dimensions of a brand: functional, social, spiritual, and mental. The next model is the Brand Code. This code structures the attributes of a band in terms of product/benefit, mission, vision, values, styling, and positioning. Gad uses these two concepts to develop a number of applications, including a customer research instrument. He ends the book with 10 commandments for building a brand with a future.

Gad argues that, "branding literature remains largely theoretical because of the mystery inherent in the subject." He argues that scientific interest in why effective brands work is less important than an appreciation for the fact that branding does work - and an ability to make makes work in practice. In contrast to this position, one might suggest that a robust theory of brands would contribute to better practice. While Gad does not take a scholarly approach, he does propose a theory for analyzing brand opportunities and building successful brands in series of well-written, insightful case studies. Gad's conceptual models and sensitizing concepts deserve consideration in the context of a larger research program.

Review of European English edition published in Design Research News, Volume 6, Number 6, June 2001. ISSN 1473-3862.

I enjoyed this fresh take on marketing. Definitely worth the money and time to read.

As I read this excellent book, I was reminded of what Whitman once asserted: "Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes." If each human being is "large" and "contains multitudes", how difficult (if not impossible) it would be to grasp the nature and extent of the diversity within cultures such as families, communities, cities, and countries. In the Foreword, Rapaille addresses his reader directly: "This book gives you a new set of glasses to look at the way you -- and the rest of the world -- buy and sell, live and function. Just as using the microscope to see microbes changed the way we practice medicine, and breaking the code of the hieroglyphics suddenly gave us access to the incredible amount of information hidden for centuries, archetypology -- the new science of decoding cultures -- is changing the way we look at ourselves, at others, and at organizations." Here are his seven "Secrets":

1. The structure is the message: people don't buy products and services -- they buy relationships.

2. Cultures have an unconscious: cultural archetypes have the power to make or break any marketing, sales, or public relations plan.

3. Those who don't know the "code" can't open the "door": decoding the mindset of the target market opens doors of opportunity.

4. Time, space, and energy are the building blocks of all cultures: each culture has a DNA which means that any organization can encode its culture for superior marketing and sales performance.

5. Solve the right problem: Each organization must design and create new products or services to solve the right customer problems.

6. The more global, the more local: Quality is the passport to global markets, but the code for quality differs from culture to culture, market to market, person to person.

7. The Third World War is underway -- and it is cultural: cultural awareness is the key to success and to personal and collective freedom.

For whom will this book be most valuable? First, decision-makers in global organizations. Also, others who suspect that certain widely-accepted assumptions about "culture" (however defined) are either inadequate or flat-out wrong. Of greatest interest to me are those sections in which Rapaille explains how to "decode" a culture. What he calls "unconscious cultural forces" must be understood or a "cultural World War III" will be inevitable, if it is not already underway. (He thinks it is.) Those who you have read Daniel Goleman's Working with Emotional Intelligence will be especially interested in what Rapaille has to say about emotional imprints, emotional experiences, and the correlations between and among them. As archetype shifts occur, paradigm shifts seem certain to follow.

Throughout the book, Rapaille devotes substantial attention to examining culural realities (and their implications) in terms of their relevance to business in general, and to marketing and sales in particular. At one point he observes: "Today's high-speed changes are not as chaotic or as random as we are led to believe. There are not only distinct patterns to be found in culturally specific behaviors and attitudes, but also identifiable forces that shape members of these societies. Once we understand these forces and the way they are organized, we can deal with them strategically." Perhaps he agrees with Peter Drucker's opinion that man's greatest challenge is to manage a future which has already occurred. Rapaille's is a significant contribution to our understanding of cultural "multitudes" even as so many have yet to be revealed.

I have lived in several different countries throughout the world in sales, marketing and ommunications positions. G. Clotaire Rapaille has been able to bring this down to words. Wal-Mart made one of the biggest mistakes when going abroad and expanding to Europe. In Germany Wal-Mart was met with strong resistance from labor unions to consumer organizations. They lost in a very big way. Just being American and the American "Can do" mentality was not enough. The executives should have opened their minds and soul to other ways of thinking and understanding their target audience.

G. Clotaire Rapaille explains in this book how to decode the CNA (Cultural DNA) which influences the way people of a particular country or area buy.
If you are involved in international sales, marketing or communication in any way read this book before you take on the task of introducing some new product or advertising campaign to a specific country other than your own.

An example of reality. A well known Swiss department store decided to use an english language slogan, "come in and find out" well a great number of people interpreted this to mean "come in but please leave". This was a flop. They executives as well as the ad agency were at fault. They used research based on English speaking audiences and not in the home market.

Read, reflect and understand this book.

AD LAND is the first book to explore the development of advertising from an international perspective rather than the usual regional, domestic focus. As such it is a recommended pick for any college-level business library strong in advertising and marketing history: it considers the origins and trends of modern advertising, providing a history of past ad approaches and their evolution into modern ad innovations. Interviews with dozens of the leading names in advertising accompany this excellent report.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

"Consumers know exactly what they want. They want it all... They're not remotely confused." Thus said Kevin Roberts, the worldwide CEO of Saatchi and Saatchi, one of the most famous of global advertising firms. But he must feel that even the unconfused consumers need direction, and it is the job of advertisers to give it, although I can't help remembering Lily Tomlin's line that without advertising, people would just wander the aisles of stores purposelessly without doing anything. Roberts was talking to Mark Tungate, a British journalist who specializes in media and advertising, and who has now written _Adland: A Global History of Advertising_ (Kogan Page). You can't get away from advertising, but you don't see what is going on behind all the clever slogans and slick photography, so Tungate's book is a window on a world that is otherwise invisible to us. Everyone who picks up this book will know some of the advertisements described, but because the book is a global assessment, no one will recognize them all. However, there are themes that run through all the states that make up Adland, and smart advertisers will (like smart novelists or smart architects) pay attention to the history of their field described here, and smart consumers will come away with an increased understanding of how advertising does its job.

Advertising agencies all over the world, and throughout advertising history, seem to come in two parts, the creatives and the pragmatists. The creatives are the ones who feel that an artistic (broadly defined, of course) creation inspires the customers to buy. A creative director of a French agency told the author, "Working in advertising is one of the few ways you can be creative and make money at the same time." That is perhaps exaggeration, but advertising has proven a magnet for creative people. Some of them have gotten a start in advertising and gone on to more "legitimate" creativity; Tungate lists as advertising graduates Salman Rushdie, Len Deighton, Sir Ridley Scott, and many others. The pragmatists are eager to sell based on facts, research, and statistics. "Advertisers are not spending billions to decorate media," said one agency head who belonged to the pragmatist school, "Their messages are not meant as ornaments." The balance between creativity and pragmatism is different in each agency, or advertising era, or even within nations, but there is a bottom line. Commenting on creative awards (and there is an annual awards ceremony for advertisers in Cannes, of all places), a former agency vice-chairman said, "Creative awards are your report card - they enable you to keep track of how you're doing. But you can't let them become your goal. The best reward is making the cash registers ring."

But there is plenty to be said for a catchy and creative ad, no matter its financial success. Tungate examines the stories behind plenty of the classics (and who cares if they brought in customers?), like the witty one-page, black and white ads for the old Volkswagen beetle, the "We Try Harder" of Avis, the pregnant man campaign for the Health Education Council in England ("Would you be more careful if it was you that got pregnant?"), the "1984" Apple ad broadcast during the Superbowl, the deliberately shocking images of Benetton, and many more. Plenty of these were the ideas of young Turks moving into the advertising game, eager players insistent on making a name for themselves. Over and over again, Tungate shows how these players then eased into more consistent, less risky campaigns and new young Turks took over. Tungate's book is a valiant attempt to keep historic track of the players and the agencies, which swap team members and consolidate at often dizzying paces in these pages. He writes with a genuine appreciation of good advertising, and his jocular journalistic prose is extremely readable. There will always be philosophical and creative shifts in advertising, but a case could be made that the rate of change has never been greater than now. One of the most recent pitches analyzed here, from just last year, was for the Onitsuka Tiger sports shoe, featuring members of the company's staff (dubbed for this performance "The Onitsuka Tiger National Choir") singing a nonsense song. The result was a hit on the Web, and viewers were invited to send in their own karaoke performance of the song to win a pair of shoes. It was neither print nor TV, so the ad was from a completely new world, but it was funny and catchy, so it was also from a classic tradition. _Adland_ gives a history to understand the traditions within a bustling and influential business realm.

I love advertising. So I naturally love this book. It gives a complete view of it all. You'll meet the white shoe Madison Avenue agencies and the Jewish agency people. You'll meet the British ad people. You'll meet them all.

It starts with the likes of our beloved Claude Hopkins, as it should. From there it goes into more modern agencies. But alas, you'll also learn about an all but forgotten very important advertising venue, the soap opera and how it sold a lot of stuff to a lot of people for a very long time.

If you're in the advertising business, you must read this. This is your industry as it really is and was. If you're a casual reader of anything to do with marketing, read this. You'll love it.

Highly recommended.

Susanna K. Hutcheson, Creative Director
Power Communications LLC