Throughout history, selling and entertainment have gone hand in hand - from the medieval pedlar and the medicine show, to generations of TV commercials featuring song and dance, comedy, and cartoon animals, right up to today's celebrities who launch their own multi-million dollar brands.
How does advertising work? Does it have to attract conscious attention in order to transmit a ‘Unique Selling Proposition’? Or does it insinuate emotional associations into the subconscious mind? Or is it just about being famous... or maybe something else? In Paul Feldwick’s radical new view, all theories of how advertising works have their uses – and all are dangerous if they are taken too literally as the truth. The Anatomy of Humbug deftly and entertainingly picks apart the historical roots of our common – and often contradictory – beliefs about advertising, in order to create space for a more flexible, creative and effective approach to this fascinating and complex field of human communication. Drawing on insights ranging from the nineteenth-century showman P.T. Barnum to the twentieth-century communications theorist Paul Watzlawick, as well as influential admen such as Bernbach, Reeves and Ogilvy, Feldwick argues that the advertising industry will only be able to deal with increasingly rapid change in the media landscape if it both understands its past and is able to criticise its most entrenched habits of thought. The Anatomy of Humbug is an accessible business book that will help advertising and marketing professionals create better campaigns.
Although the balance sheet may not even put a value on it, a company's brand or its portfolio of brands is in many cases its most valuable asset, accounting for as much as 70% of a firm's market value in some cases. This book argues that because of this and because of the power of not-for-profit brands like Oxfam, all organisations should make the brand their central organising principle, guiding every action and decision.Divided into three parts and written by eighteen experts on the subject, this fully revised and updated guide to brands and branding examines the case for brands, outlines best practice and the future for brands. It includes chapters on brand valuation, what makes a brand great, brand strategy, brand experience, visual and verbal identity, brand communications, brand protection and new chapters on branding in India and brands in a digital world.
What is Brand Equity, Anyway? is a must-read for those involved with creating, planning and researching effective brands and advertising. Advertising and marketing academics or anyone interested in the field of advertising and brand strategy should add this book to their collection. What is Brand Equity, Anyway? explores the way in which brands work, the factors that define the making of a strong brand and how brand strength can be measured and monitored. Part two takes this knowledge forward into creating a measurably successful advertising "Advertising is an expensive business. Those who spend money on it should want to know what results they’re getting. And those who plan and create it should want to find out if what they’re doing is working; and how, and why it’s working (or not), in order to learn how to do it better next time." Feldwick is a master at raising, reasoning and resolving the questions that go to the very heart of the advertiser’s raison d’être. If you are seeking to enter the holy of holies in the world of advertising reading a copy of What is Brand Equity, Anyway? is an advisable first step.