Customer Reviews

Advertising and the Mind of the Consumer: What Works, What Doesn't, and Why (The Allen & Unwin Business and Management)

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The book dissects the advertising process and analyzes the different elements that make up the ad.

Backed by years of tracking TV commercials down under, Max Sutherland has first-hand knowledge of what qualities make an ad work and what others make no or a negative difference in the ad's effectiveness.

The book commences with an introduction to advertsing's facts of life and a clarification of what is substantial and what is not in the public's perception of the industry.

It ends with a couple of interesting chapters that introduce the reader to the basic concepts of ad-effectiveness research. All in all, a good and solid book.

It does, however, use brand examples throughout that are known only to Australian readers and primarily discusses broadcast advertising.

This book is as fun to read as it is informative. The author makes his points with many memorable analogies and provocative perspectives. For instance, he observes that "We as consumers generally believe (advertising) does not really work on us personally. Despite this, advertisers keep on advertising. Something must be working." He makes the analogy between how advertising works and how we perceive our kids growing up. "We don't notice their physical growth each day, but from time to time we become aware that they have grown. Evaluating a single exposure to advertising is like asking how much your kid has grown in the last 24 hours." The author continually points out how these imperceptibly small changes add up to significant ones over time. Another analogy I really like is that "advertising is like a feather that just tips the balance when other things are about equal." And in most markets, brands are competing in categories where the consumer sees the products as being about equal. It is in these situations that advertising becomes so important. The book is also full of research findings and results, but without being "textbook like" about it. There is a gold mine of practical and memorable advertising findings and advice within these covers. The book is divided into an A part explaining "Why advertising has remained a mystery for so long." This is the part with all the insights and perspectives on the role of advertising in branding. The B part of the book addresses "What works, what doesn't and why." This section of the book contains insights from the author's years of experience in running continuous advertising tracking studies around the world. In summary this is a fun book to read and is full of information that could be of use to any markcom or campaign manager. Shelby McIntyre Marketing Professor Santa Clara University Santa Clara, CA 95053

The subject of the book is advertising, the expertise of the author is marketing research and its background is psychology. However, the text is highly suitable for marketing professionals. Why ? The reason is that it gives practical tools for marketing decisions concerning advertising, tools that have long time beeing denied by advertising agencies. As many marketing professionals may know, ad agencies have built several "recipes" or "éclairs d'imagination" never giving their foundations. Instead, Max Sutherland gives clear guidelines, combining them with the correspondant motivational background and/or justifying them by facts. Additionally, the book is very well written to allow the reader to take the core conclusion of each chapter.

For anyone involved in making ads, this book gives a simple explanation of what happens in people's heads when they are exposed to advertising. I have used the book's principles over and over again when teaching the basics of advertising management to young brand marketers. I describe this book as a "must read".

To all advertisers and consumers; This is a must for your knowledge. Finally, a book that evades the 'magic' of advertising and pins down the psychological factors that make an ad succesful or not. It is seen from every point of view; the advertiser, the consumer and even the psychologist. It will change the way you advertise and see ads As an advertising student I found it to be my little bible.Get it!

This book is great. It cuts through the hype, the b.s., the nonsense. Everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) has a view on advertising, but not many have a view that is as comprehensible and as reasonable as that expressed by Max Sutherland in his book. Combining psychological theory with good doses of common sense, Professor Sutherland reminds us what so many of us tend to forget -- that marketing and advertising is practice supported and expanded by theory.

Advertising as a domain tends to be dominated by either practitioners or academics. The practitioners can have a tendency to do a lot of 'hand waving.' That is, they talk a lot, it may even look pretty impressive, but they don't necessarily talk a lot of sense. The academics for their part are caught up in theory. The academics ignore the real world as it presents (or at least may present) a disturbing set of facts that inconveniently do not match the truth of the theory.

Max Sutherland manages to bring the two sides of practice and theory together masterfully. In fact, it is really hard to decide from reading the book whether he is an academic or a practitioner -- it is perhaps not surprising to find that he is a bit of both. He's done well to bridge the gap between these two worlds.

The book's 'bite-size' chapters make it especially readable for anyone. And the reader can pick and choose from the range of topics that are offered - such as subliminal advertising, conformity, silent symbols and badges of identity, vicarious experience and virtual reality, etc. This is a book that will be enlightening for both the practitioner and the academic, and a delight for any person, including a lay person, to read.

This is advertising for pleasure and profit!

If I had to choose one book as a survival book in the adfield, this would definitely be my weapon of choice.

It has down to earth and truthful advertising insights about how things work or don't in the advertising universe.

It really, really is a must have for all us who deal from the agency side or the marketing side of the ad business.

Better if any agency and client read this before to fully understand one another, in working better off as one team aiming to one vision.

This book details and focus everything from the psychological point of view.

This one is definitely a keeper!

I was introduced to this book several years ago when I was in the ad agency industry.

Since then, my issue has been read and re-read, referenced countless times.

My copy mysteriously disappeared (hey who could blame them??) so have just rebought the newest version of this book.

The book is brilliant because it gets behind the psychology of the buyer, allowing you to really and simply understand the thought process behind the buying decision.

Others who have touched on the subject of the psychology of reasons why we buy have made the content too heavy, too theoretical and let's face it - Boring with a capital "B" ... but not these authors.

It has great examples of ad campaigns throughout the book.

Personally this book has helped me design and write more responsive advertising campaigns as the many learnings from this book have stayed.

This is a must-read for anyone in an ad agency, students of marketing and advertising, and anyone in the marketing industry.

Buy this book, you won't regret it.

and you should read it. it keeps it's promise(advertising and the mind of the consumer:what works what doesn't and why).its all there in the book, explained, with plenty of examples and pretty complete. if you are interested in this field buy this book, and then consider other books if you really want to, but dont miss out on this book.simply a very good book. we should have more books like this.

You won't find any glitz or glamour in this book, just very intelligent writing about why advertising really works - and how to create advertising that works.

The wonderful part about this book is that it provides you with the key measures you need to use in seeing whether or not your advertising is/has worked. When clients want to justify their budgets, agencies can now help them do this by translating the results of their creative work into hard numbers.

For anyone serious about knowing how to create great advertising, this is a must read.