Advertising For Skeptics

by Bob Hoffman

A bounty of heretical, unpopular, and aberrant thoughts about the ad industry. Bob Hoffman, author of Amazon #1 sellers “BadMen” and “Laughing@Advertising” looks at advertising’s “decade of delusion” and comes away a skeptic. What went wrong? Just about everything.

For 161 pages, Mr. Hoffman puts forth an all-out assault against the ills of the advertising industry. He details its hubris, delusions...egos and genuflection of data, drops them all into a garbage can, and lights it on fire. Communication Arts

Genres: Business

179 pages, Paperback

Published February 8, 2020

Reviews

[Kristaps · Rating 4 out of 5]

Haven't read Bob Hoffman before much and from what I understand this is compilation on some of his thoughts about advertising that you can read elsewhere (his blog). However for me most of the what you could call short essays were new so did enjoy reading it quite a lot. As someone working in the field, many of Hoffmans thoughts and ideas do resonate with me. The provocative way how they are delivered is ok with me as that gets the attention and might actually resonate with someone who needs their eyes opened. Overall pleasant read, good ideas, punchy delivery. Probably my only critique and why I didn't rate it 5/5 is the fact that it is basically several opinion pieces combined, in many cases quite one-sided (although I do agree with him), but its not fact based, so you will form an opinion with this, but won't probably gain much knowledge per se.

[Bejinha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Advertising is the industry that makes people feel bad about themselves, their choices, or their lack of a particular product. And then lie to persuade that for money, they can solve the problem.

This book is about how marketing people also lie to their clients.

[Fabian · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you read his newsletters or have read his previous books, there's nothing much new here.

If not, buy and read it.

Also, skip chapter 5.

There's one thing that bugged me. He may have a fair point about ad agencies' young people obsession and their belief that no old people are creative, but he cherry-picks a list of old award winners to prove his case. As if young people don't win awards. And I was also wondering if the juries aren't often composed of older people which would in fact prove his other point: that people like people in their own age category.

[Eugenio Gomez-acebo · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a wonderful view of the world of advertising, its crazy rules, its dellusions and heressies. In plain English, and without needing 400 pages to tell you what it can be told in 20, the book goes over all the crap, dellusions and fascination for the new and shinny things that exists today in the ad world. All these fancy statements about interactivity, about brands connecting with consumers in a wonderful dialogue, about people sharing brand content, are tore down with grace and common sense.

As Wiston Churchill once said, "However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionaly look at the results". I loved how he discusses the current digital world as non interactive, in fact you are more likely today to finish your Navy Seal training than to click on a banner ad. How the ad world become "data driven" instead of idea driven.

Is advertising a science of an art? The author makes a compelling point in saying that the problem with science is that it usually comes with progress. And how we have advanced in creating brands today vs 20 years ago is hard to demonstrate. A discipline based on educated guesses, with few certainties and no true-false answers can be hardly titled as scientific.

In essence the purpose of advertising is to create fame. You are more likely to be succesful if you are famous. And you do that with a superior product (ex Google), with lots of PR (Tesla), clever stunts, charismatic leaders or, eventually, with advertising (the most expensive way). As Rory Sutherland mentioned, "a flower is just a weed with an advertising budget". Mass media is public advertising and digital media is private advertising. And how can you be famous privately?

He ends up discussing ad fraud and the business of collecting information and data from consumers as the latest nightmare of the industry. And providing some valuable advice.

[Shozi · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read for any student of advertising. Marketing and advertising has a lot of myths and empty words thrown around and if not for people like Bob,mark ritson and byrone sharp, I would be a victim of that. A conversational read that makes you wonder for real - what works and what does not in advertising - armed by some great arguments from Bob ranging from digital ad fraud, social media's efficacy to creativity.

[Federico · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you've already read the author's blog from cover to cover, this book doesn't have much more to offer. Otherwise, it's a gold mine. I don't know anyone else who explains the failure of the AdTech industry, which is central to some of the most catastrophic businesses of our time like Google and Facebook, from the point of view of those who generally tend to support such businesses, i.e. marketers. Digital rights activists should bag these talking points and use them relentlessly.

[Ashish Agrawal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Religion for advertising dies as Punch Line. Nothing more is needed to be said - it's paramount to understand what Digital Advertising means - it's not for sure is brand building- it's for sales may be but that will require you to refer David Scott but just save enough money don't put money in digitial advertising

[David Sanz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Algunas ideas son brillantes y el autor demuestra un escepticismo tan brutal ante toda la publicidad online que aunque solamente fuera verdad un 10% (las probabilidades de las que habla, en lugar de las certezas) estaríamos ante una estafa de proporciones épicas. Sin duda ha cambiado mi forma de ver las cosas.

[Zane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though the gist of the book is similar to his other books, I enjoyed this quick read a lot.
The book plucks you out of advertising accepted truths and workings and makes you reevaluate quite a lot.

[Eben Meyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

it seems counterintuitive, but people like Bob give you hope in advertising again. There's at least one sane person in the industry!