Advertising: A Very Short Introduction

Very Short Introductions #234

by Winston Fletcher

John Wanamaker famously observed that "half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don't know which half." Indeed, though advertising is pervasive in our society, how it works (if and when it works) is not a question most of us can answer. In this Very Short Introduction , Winston Fletcher, a seasoned advertising veteran with extensive inside knowledge, offers an illuminating look at this billion-dollar business, dispelling some of the myths and misunderstandings surrounding the industry. Fletcher offers a short history of advertising and explains how the industry works and how each of the parties--the advertisers, the media, and the agencies--contribute to the process. He also looks at the financial side of advertising and asks how today's Wanamakers know if they have been successful, or whether their money has in fact been wasted. The book concludes with a discussion of controversial and unacceptable areas of advertising, such as advertising aimed at
children and the promotion of products such as cigarettes and alcohol.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction, Economics, Psychology, Ebooks

160 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2010

About the author

A comprehensive biography is available here. »

Reviews

[Justin Evans · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most VSIs are written by professors or other third-person experts. This one is written from a much more first-person perspective: Fletcher is an expert on advertising largely because he's an expert advertiser.

This makes the book interesting: I picked it up expecting a more humanities-based explanation & critique kind of thing. Instead, it's a full throated defense of advertising as a grand social good. I am not a likely audience for that view, so Fletcher did very well to even hold my attention. And he's good on the logical hair-splitting: his argument is something like "to attack advertising as socially harmful makes no sense. Consider the following advertisements: classifieds, advertising for charities, advertising for public goods. They are part of advertising. They are not socially harmful. Therefore, 'advertising' is not socially harmful, although some advertisements could be."

Fair enough. We then get an explanation of how advertising firms work, their history, and the ways they judge their own success. The book closes with his "advertising is a grand social good" claim, which is much shakier. he lists the following as reasons for his claim:

i) it subsidizes media like as paper, TV and so on.
ii) ad agencies function as art patrons, and develop the creativity of the society. Moreover, they provide free art to the public.
iii) they benefit consumers by pushing prices down and help us make our choices better (both due to improved information about products and competitors' prices).
iv) it helps employers by increasing demand for products and thus increasing the demand for labor.

Now, of course,

i) media sponsored by advertizing is almost always worse than media that is purchased (HBO), or sponsored by government or community organizing (PBS; BBC). It is also much more often slanted towards the interests of advertisers in mass media; those advertisers are, overwhelmingly, huge businesses.*
ii) seriously? Ads are sometimes entertaining. They are almost never intellectually or emotionally gripping.
iii) this could be equally well achieved by a database.
iv) he had previously stated that advertising does *nothing* to affect overall demand, and that it only affects market share. So... one or the other.

But the fact that he made me think is a good reason for recommending this to others. Now if someone could just explain to me why Americans change the 's' to a 'z' in every word *except* advertising, I'll be happy.

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* Of course, the actual content of such mass media would probably be slanted towards those interests even without the influence of the advertisers' money. I doubt we can blame GE for the awfulness that is 'Anger Management,' for instance.

[Bakknari · Rating 1 out of 5]

I recommend reading the review by Justin Evans - it generally encompasses some of my critiques of this book.
I do have to preface that the book was published in 2010 and is in desperate need of a new edition, given the changes in advertising that have occurred in the last 15 years.

Fletcher attempts to downplay and ignore the impact of advertising tactics on adults/children, and then he tries to morally grandstand and claim that advertising provides a "moral good." I find this leap in logic astounding. While I did find the history of advertising interesting, I also find the author obnoxious. He picks at semantics for portions of the book, which provides nothing of substance.

An example from the first chapter: “Other types of marketing communication that are not normally defined as advertising include: packaging ; sales promotions (money-offs, two-for-ones, competitions, and the like); catalogues; shop windows and in-store publicity; brand placements in television programmes and films; commercial emails; brand names on clothes and other goods; public relations (brand mentions in the media); commercial websites and blogs; and telephone selling. All of these (and many others) are marketing communications and are often used to increase the sales of things. But within the industry, they are not defined as advertisements, nor as advertising.” – Most people would argue that all of those things are considered advertisements and advertising. His own definition of an advertisement (“…a paid-for communication intended to inform and/ or persuade one or more people.”) would certainly encompass packaging (paying for branding on a package), competitions (often result in money exchange), brand placements in TV/ film (again, they pay for these things in some way), commercial websites (paying someone to make an aesthetically pleasing, easy-to-maneuver website). He later spends just over a page breaking down his definition of "advertisement" word-by-word, while also take a cheap shot at "critics hostile to advertising" by using vague reasoning. (I would argue that they are critics for reasons, though he refuses to include what those reasons would be. Strawman arguments are aplenty in the book.) He also tries to purport that the definition of an advertisement (or advertising) is “a mite blurred.” Again, this is very disingenuous. It is as if he is trying to make it all sound better than it really is, disarming the reader with vague nonsense and a clearly biased, one-sided view of the topic.

When he does mention the psychological tactics used in advertising, he calls it meeting a customers’ “psychological and emotive needs.” He mentions research that shows that “emotional” advertisements are more effective in luring in people. No mention of the predatory practices of certain advertisements, no mention of issues with overconsumption, no mention of how certain advertisements (even for products that are NOT for children) cater to children.

In another chapter, he complains that researchers' research is essentially invalid and "should be taken with sizable pinches of salt" because it's in their financial interest to convince advertisers to utilize their methods. Then he proceeds to give an example of a charlatan researcher (James Vicary) from 1957; Vicary claimed he conducted an experiment using subliminal messaging with over 45,000 people - Vicary did not provide explanations of his results, and it was impossible to replicate his experiment. He later admitted that it was all fraudulent. While this is a great example by Fletcher, it is an example from over 50 years ago. And this one instance in the 1950s should not be used to judge all researchers.

Later again, he purports that there is almost no sex in advertising, though there *are* sexy advertisements for perfumes, cosmetics, fashion, and lingerie - all rather large markets. Even Haagen-Dazs has utilized sexual themes in its advertisements, and they continued to do this until 2017, when they finally commented that sex-themed advertisements do not work like they used to. So, clearly, sex sold some things for a very long time. "Almost no sex in advertising" is a laughable statement.

All in all, while I enjoyed the parts of the book that simply provided factual and historical information, I cannot rate this book highly at all given how egregious many of Fletcher's claims are and how obnoxiously patronizing he treats the readers.

[Ethan Hulbert · Rating 3 out of 5]

This VSI book was the best out of the three I've read now, so maybe that's why I'm putting it at 4 stars instead of 3 when it could really go either way.

Fletcher went all in at the end on saying that advertising is a public good, which I found a little delusional. That was really weird.

It was for sure a history of advertising, but didn't really go into agencies in particular, so it was kind of an amorphous history of a concept only. Wasn't bad. Was REALLY centered on the UK. Would've liked to see an American or more globalized approach, or like, combining most western countries.

Actually in writing this review I have convinced myself that it's really just a 3 star book. Yeah.

[Ali Tbikh · Rating 4 out of 5]

great book. It has many insights about the industry. Also, I like the writer's realism. All his arguments and points are properly contextualized

[Nafim Abir · Rating 5 out of 5]

tell you what imma read all books in this series. see
liked this book man, the things that I didn't learn by surfing through the internet in 6 months, I learned it in here in just 3 days

[M. Ashraf · Rating 3 out of 5]

Before Reading:-
A Very Short Introduction Series, is on of the best series there is, It is written by expert authors in each field, published by Oxford Press... so it's very useful if you want to get introduced to new topics, subjects, ideas and it is very easy to read too... According to Wikipedia as of the mid of this year there is nearly 350+ title in this series :) that's a lot :) , I got hold of nearly 150+ titles :), this will took years to finish them all :) but It's better to start anyways :) As there are many topics, I was rattled on how to begin, do I take them by the publication date? to get the hold of them one by one :/ I decided since I don't have all of them I'll start alphabetically and give them there own number in the series :) although it doesn't matter how you start, many interesting topics are up ahead you just have to read :)

#234 Advertising
what is advertising and advertisement ? the market ? the meaning of a brand, the media spectrum, advertising campaigns, creativity & copyright, International advertising & the importance of research :) This is another world, many different definitions and aspects, all from an advertiser point of view so you can sense his enthusiasm about it in his words, it rarely point to the other side of the equation but its O.K at the end you get a really good grasp about what this all about!

Before leaving television, two myths need to be dispelled. First, it is widely believed that the advent of the Internet has resulted in television viewer-ship falling. There is no evidence of this happening; on the contrary, though fragmentation has meant that 60 Advertising each individual channel’s viewer-ship has fallen, total television viewing – in terms of number of hours per week – continues to increase, steadily if slowly.
Second, it is widely believed that the advent of Video-on-Demand, and the use of zappers, results in people zapping through commercials, to the advertisers’ disadvantage. Again, the evidence shows this to be the opposite of the truth – partly because V-o-D encourages people to watch more television, and partly because only a tiny minority of viewers zap through commercials, and then only occasionally. Despite the increasing competition in all media, the future of television advertising seems assured.
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Though the relative size and importance of each medium will change from country to country, as has been said, the fundamentals remain constant. The fundamentals are determined by the technical nature of each medium, and the human nature of consumers. These do not change.

I don't think those things are exactly the same a cross the globe as most of the talks were about the UK and sometimes the US, but as he mentioned the fundamentals remain constant :), for me and regarding the last quotes, I don't think it's a myth, I rarely watch T.V nowadays most of the shows are on demand, I like to zap through commercials, the rise of new media platforms instead of television is great weather new channels on Youtube or Netflix most of the major networks are providing there shows on the internet like HBO, CBS... and it will be more in the near future...

The end is what the target market makes of the messages. It is not the messages you put into an advertisement that matter, it is the messages the target market takes away from the advertisement that matter.
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Yes, new ideas do come to highly creative people ‘out of the blue’. But they come because creative people constantly seek them, both consciously and subconsciously.
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Do you think advertising is a moral activity?

[David Roberts · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book I read to research this post was Advertising A Very Short Introduction by Winston Fletcher which is a very good book. In this book there is even an ancient advertisement for a Roman brothel which is little more than a hole with an arrow and presumably was on the entrance. Advertising is almost as old as mankind although the study of advertising demographics or how well a particular advertisement works is relatively new and only started around the 1950's in America. In America they had the Effies awards to celebrate effective advertising and later in Britain the IPA awards. It's a fallacy that advertising on television has become less effective due to the internet. Television stations because they are more numerous don't reach over 50% of the population with a single station like they used to but more people than ever watch television and generally they spend more and more time doing so. Also with video on demand people can skip adverts but research has shown few do. The big television stations are losing a lot of their revenue because of course the adverts only reach a smaller proportion of the population. With the internet people are receptive to adverts from companies they like and of course get recommendations from their friends more often than not. Blanket advertising like popups on websites is definitely a no no. Magazines and newspapers too have for the main publications found they reach a smaller and smaller proportion of the population because they are many more publications. Also regional publications are read by a substantial proportion of the population and many of these are good value to advertise in. Advertising is usually measured in cost per thousand with television stations in general having a bigger audience but costing more per thousand. There is often no absolute right and wrong in advertising and whether a company pays more for television or less for other mediums is often little more than opinion. Of course for companies like Tesco in Britain a store chain that a 1/3 of the population regularly use advertising is a very serious business and you will often see them track sales with things like vouchers and points cards where you are given points when you buy something that subsequently can be used to purchase stuff. Companies like Tesco are now embracing internet shopping where you can shop for groceries on the internet and they deliver it soon afterwards although that is going beyond this book. I really enjoyed this book which does a good job of explaining the different aspects of advertising. Of course an advert for one market might be disastrous for another demographically different type of consumer and it has to be geared accordingly. A company has to do research in who it's customers are.

[Ada · Rating 4 out of 5]

Winston Fletcher's book is a good introductory guide to anyone wondering whether they want to consider a career in advertising. It explains what an account planner is, and elaborates on what a relationship between an art director and a copy-writer is supposed to look like. Fletcher's book is also highly readable, even if its author is slightly too optimistic about the benefits advertising confers on a consumer society. Be warned, however : the book is written by an industry insider, and he does not offer a theoretical approach to reading specific adverts, or indeed a critique of the industry. For those like myself, with a possible interest in practicing advertising , there's hardly a better place to start.

[Vikas Datta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lucid, accessible introduction to this most misunderstood art..