Promotion Books

Whether you're desiring to learn everything from A-Z about new media in today's fast-paced, technologically-advanced, and ever-changing world of new media OR you're lost in the vast maze of choices, this book has ALL of the answers. A wealth of information is packed into this volume that is extremely well-organized. New media applications are explained in detail, including respective benefits and shortcomings. Whether you're a rookie or novice, a student, instructor, practitioner or researcher, you need this book in your personal communications/advertising resource library. Stafford and Faber have created an outstanding literary work, a comprehensive "dictionary" on new media.

This is one of the best textbooks I've used while pursuing my MBA. Instead of being mired in academic theory, this focuses on real-world, applicable concepts. In a sea of boring, overly theoretical (and ridiculously overpriced) textbooks, this is a standout - two thumbs up!

Liz McFall's scholarly, carefully researched and well-written book has a simple narrative. Advertising is fun, interesting, multi-faceted and culturally significant. But it isnt new. The not-new-ness of advertising is McFall's refrain throughout this resoundingly anti-epochal tome. Semiotic critiques of advertising have, according to McFall, suffered from three main failings. Firstly, they assume that culture is a place that can offer meanings for economic manipulation. The author points out that culture and economy are mutually constitutive and it makes little sense to imply that they were once two separate domains, one tainted by commerce, the other a sort of anthropologists' Eden. Secondly, most post-Marxist critiques of advertising (and McFall leaves us in no doubt of the post-or-neo-Marxist credentials of the leading semioticians) suppose that advertising is more pervasive and persuasive than ever before. This complaint, we learn, has been made for the best part of three centuries, at least in the UK, which is the main source for McFall's historical research. If we look at ads in historical context, the use of integrated media, subtle typography, and emotional appeals have been part of the power of 'puffery' for a very long time. Advertising was never quaintly factual.

McFall calls her approach a genealogical one, which brings us to the third criticism of cultural critiques of advertising. Which is that some of the most prominent authors who used semiotic critique to locate advertising as an instrument of false consciousness didnt know much about the nuts and bolts of the ad game. Throughout McFall's book we are treated to many insights about the way advertising is made, and this illustrates well the limits of critical analyses of advertising texts that take little account of the way material practices have influenced and shaped advertising (or marketing communications, as it is known) and the way we understand it. Along the way the book takes many swipes at authors who base their claims about advertising's cultural influence on an alleged epochal new-ness. As she points out, even the wiles and wheezes of persuasive, pervasive advertising are not entirely new, at least not if we look at the way advertising was made, produced and understood since the 1700s.

McFall accepts that advertising technology has changed, and concedes that the modern-day mediated consumer cornucopia might just have some dimensions or effects that are new. And in the latter end of the book McFall uses reports of analyses of advertising archives (started, though no longer at, US agencies Ayer and JWT) to discuss the emergence of a hybrid discipline of copywriting that drew on post-war psychology, art and literature. JWT, indeed (after the influence of JWT himself had waned) became doyens of persuasion by using emotionally loaded copy. Still, though, she remains resolutely in epoch-denial and argues powerfully that cultural critiques of advertising are flawed because they take insufficient account of the historically specific material practices of the field. Advertising is a set of diverse and irregular material practices that are constitutive of culture.

After McFall's repeated references to the salutary intellectual effect of the material practices of advertising it comes as a slight disappointment that her sources are a couple of historical archives and a few ethnographies. McFall successfully shows that advertising has always been tricksy and everywhere, but takes no account of the effects technology and integrated media interests (and the material practices therein) have had on the way 20th century advertising is made and understood. Another issue is her characterisation that semiotic critiques of advertising depend for their coherence on an illusory binary of culture/economy.

So, stimulating, carefully argued, informative, an essential read for researchers in this field, but perhaps the PoMos can party on after all.

The entire contents of the following review are public domain, since I wrote them when employed by the U.S. federal government:

"Some officers could now spend as many as four years at a duty station before getting a new assignment.

The Air Force is now looking for ways to reduce the number of station-to-station moves for officers, particularly for those in the United States.

By extending the average assignment length for an officer from three years to four years, the Air Force believes it can reduce the number of yearly officer PCS moves. Any moves occurring before four years would primarily be for professional development reasons only, said Lt. Gen. Roger A. Brady, deputy chief of staff for manpower and personnel.

"We don't necessarily want to move people around as quickly as we may have in the past, if there is not a developmental reason for that," he said. "And there is a lot of development that can take place in your first few years of service, wherever you are."

The general said that for many young officers, lieutenants in particular, the greatest professional development comes from gaining expertise and experience at one stable location. For higher-ranking officers, professional development comes from attending schools or by taking a command position. Real professional development, the general said, does not come from simply moving to a new assignment.

"We have always been a force that wanted to develop people, and part of developing people is to give them different opportunities," he said. "But if you are not careful, you can confuse movement with development. So what we are looking at are policies that might create moves that are not necessarily related to development."

General Brady also said fewer moves for officers will put less stress on their families by allowing children to stay in a single school for a longer time and by allowing spouses to find more stable careers.

While the change to PCS policy will mostly affect officers inside the continental United States, it will also affect officers stationed overseas, especially at those assigned to European bases.

"We find that some of our traditional overseas assignments... are perhaps as stable as (in the Continental United States,) and so it begs the question as to whether or not you really need to have that disparity in how you manage units," he said.

Manning overseas units at higher levels increases PCS moves and the costs associated with them. The Air Force will now be more amenable to extending officers that want to stay longer at an overseas tour and will look closer than it has in the past at officers who want to shorten their overseas tours, General Brady said.

The Air Force has other reasons for limiting the number of officer PCS moves. One of those reasons is recouping the cost of the moves and applying that funding in other places.

"We have a budgetary issues in a lot of areas: fighting the global war on terror, high ops tempo, ageing aircraft fleets and growing manpower costs," the general said.

General Brady said more effective management of officer moves will better help their professional development, and will also free up funding so it can be applied to winning the war on terror and to recapitalizing ageing Air Force aircraft."

Author has extracted oodles of technical references into an overview that covers a vital sixty-year span of American Southwest history. Victoria Dye skillfully illuminates the intertwining of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad Company (AT&SF) with its more visual counterpart and partner, the Fred Harvey Company. In a mere six chapters, along with a smattering of descriptive BW photos, the author summarizes the wild ethnic mixture of the early Southwestern frontier with a strong emphasis on the economic impact of the myriad cultures. She describes how Harvey and AT&SF precipitated the view of pioneer New Mexico and Arizona as `Indian' more than `Mexican or Spanish,' even though the domineering government and religion was of the latter for hundreds of years. Dye further characterizes how the Harvey/AT&SF promotions helped travelers [remarkably] overcome the spectre of Indian hostilities, replacing fear with their inventive illusion of `Santa Fe' gentility. Marketing, promotion and economics are the core of the book. The author is to be highly commended for distilling five centuries of Cultural Revolution in to 100 pages of easy reading. The bibliography yields [literally] hundreds of literary resources (perhaps this book's most valuable contribution) for further reader interest. The author's supplemental material helps substantiate a "who's who" timeline of AT&SF, Fred Harvey, Santa Fe, curio and Southwestern Indian history - don't miss these appendix, page notes, and bibliographic features!

This book is very indepth with a broad range of all the disciplines which Andrew Hoyne has excelled at in the design enviroment we all live in. His work has a unique style, very clean and suggestive, great use of color and a firm base understanding of branding and how to make a company strive higher in the big world out there. Great fresh creative ideas which will even inspire the non designer, but even just the sort of person who appreciates great looking design.

This play is developed on many levels. The three main characters are all intertwined but hidden by their own secrets and burdens. As they struggle to survive we see the full relationships with all of their past pain, current misinterpretations, and future dreams unfold and collide with one another. The author does a masterful job of surprising us with the direction this play will take right up until the shocking ending. If you enjoy stories that develop characters quickly and with surprising depth as I do, then you will enjoy this compact play.

A professor of mine required this text for class, and I loved it! It is simply a collection of articles published throughout the year on the subject of marketing. These are topics and views that you don't see in any marketing textbook! I plan on buying every new addition even though I have graduated because they are so relecant and it will certainly impress collegues when you can reference articles from such various publications.

A brand new 2002, 416 page beautiful plastic laminated hardbound library book advertising memorabilia lovers will appreciate. There are more than 1,200 large, full color sharp photos included. Current values are shown. Listings are in alphabetical order throughout the book, making item location easy. Useful for beginners and advanced collectors, and everyone interested in ad memorabilia. Add it to your library. It's a beautiful book.

This fascinating book chronicles the history of Apple Computer using photographs of Apple t-shirts. The end result is a lavish, 204-page, hardcover, coffee table book with over 1,500 full-color photographs, most explained with interesting behind-the-scenes stories that you'll find nowhere else. Travel down memory lane spotting favorite shirts from the past, from ones celebrating new product introductions to ones complaining about staff cuts.