The Future of Advertising: New Media, New Clients, New Consumers in the Post-Television Age [Paperback]

Joe Cappo (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 10, 2005

Veteran industry observer Joe Cappo briefly recaps the factors that impacted the industry in the late 1990s, and gives you advice on how to best position yourself, your work, and your business.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

The shape of things to come--and how to stay ahead of the curve in a constantly changing market environment

Advertising ain't what it used to be. Gone are the days of the 15 percent commission, the three martini lunch, and the guaranteed 100 million captive viewers tuning into "Bonanza" every Tuesday night at nine. Today it's all about digital this and virtual that, divide-and-conquer guerilla strategies, and a seemingly endless march of new media, new markets, and new stealth techniques for flying under consumers' radar.

Now The Future of Advertising helps you make sense of it all by giving you a 360-degree view of the state of advertising today and a provocative glimpse into the industry of tomorrow. Industry veteran Joe Cappo offers his priceless analysis of where we are, how we got here, and emerging trends to keep an eye on. You also hear from prominent agency heads, advertisers, brand managers, and creatives who provide their good-as-gold insights, opinions, and anecdotes.

But that's not all. The Future of Advertising also arms you with practical strategies for positioning yourself, your work, and your clients to meet the challenges of an ever-morphing market environment. You get an array of surprisingly straightforward solutions for staying ahead of the curve, including:

• Merging "above-the-line" advertising with "below-the-line" techniques
• Coordinating traditional advertising with online buying patterns
• Marketing youth-oriented products to an aging population
• Finding new places for old media
• And much more

About the Author

Joe Cappo was involved in advertising for nearly forty years as journalist, executive, and critic and is now adjunct professor of advertising at DePaul University. He is the former publisher of Advertising Age and world president of the International Advertising Association

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill; 1 edition (October 10, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0071462155
• ISBN-13: 978-0071462150
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,464,944 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Joe Cappo, award-winning journalist and longtime observer of the marketing business, is the author of "The Future of Advertising: New Media, New Clients, New Consumers in the Post-Television Age."
Mr. Cappo formerly worked at Crain Communications Inc., where he held several important posts over a 25-year career. He most recently served as senior vice president-international and licensing for the publisher of more than 30 business and professional journals. In that position, he negotiated licensing agreements that expanded Crain publications to more than 20 countries around the world and to major databases and digital research sources. He also headed the acquisition of Crain's first non-English publications in Mexico and served as the subsidiary's first president.
He joined the company in 1978 as columnist for the first issue of Crain's Chicago Business. Over the next 25 years, he served as publisher of Crain's Chicago Business, publisher of Advertising Age, and group publisher over seven journals. His opinion column, often on marketing related topics, appeared regularly in Crain's Chicago Business for 25 years.
Before joining Crain, Mr. Cappo worked at the Chicago Daily News, covering crime, politics and general assignments for six years before writing a daily advertising and marketing column for nine years. When the Daily News folded in 1978, he moved his column to the Chicago Sun-Times for a brief time before joining Crain.
A native of Chicago, he attended DePaul University where he majored in philosophy and economics before serving two years in the U.S. Army. Since retiring, he has joined the faculty of DePaul University as an adjunct professor, teaching graduate classes in journalism and advertising in the College of Communication.
For more than ten years, Mr. Cappo hosted "Crain's American Business," the inflight audio channel on American Airlines. He formerly broadcast twice-daily business commentaries on Chicago's FM 100 for 18 years and is the author of "FutureScope: Success Strategies for the 1990s and Beyond," a best-selling book about the 21st Century consumer.
During his career, Mr. Cappo conducted hundreds of interviews with a wide variety of interesting personalities including Richard M. Nixon, Johnny Carson, Hubert H. Humphrey, Colonel Harland Sanders, Yogi Berra and many others.
His most recent book, "The Future of Advertising: New Media, New Clients and New Consumers in the Post-Television Age," (McGraw-Hill)has been published in English, Chinese, Korean, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish and Serbo-Croatian. It is being used as a textbook or required reading at several universities across the world.
From 1998 to 2000, Mr. Cappo was world president of the International Advertising Association, the only global organization covering all elements of the advertising business. He formerly served on the editorial and international committees of the American Business Media, and the international committee of the Magazine Publishers of America. He also was president of the Association of Area Business Publications and board member of the Chicago Advertising Federation in the early 1980s. He is currently vice president of the Off The Street Club, a 109-year-old organization that serves disadvantaged children, and a board member of the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago.
As a writer, commentator and media executive, he has lectured extensively across North America and in more than 30 countries in Latin America, Asia, Africa and Europe. His many awards include:
* Lifetime Achievement Award from Chicago Headline Club-Society of Professional Journalists, 2007
* Member, Chicago Journalism Hall of Fame, 2004
* Lewis M. Conn Award from the Association of Area Business Publications, 2004
* Dante Award from the Joint Civic Committee of Italian-Americans, 2003
* Best Original Column, Association of Area Business Publications, 1985
* Lifetime Achievement Award from DePaul University Communication Department, 1985
* Peter Lisagor Award from Chicago Headline Club-Society of Professional Journalists, 1978
* Page One Award from the Chicago Newspaper Guild, 1978
* Outstanding Achievement Award from the Justinian Society of Lawyers, 1978.
* Champion Award from the YWCA of Metropolitan Chicago, 1978
* Distinguished Alumni Award from DePaul University, 1977
* Best Feature Story, Illinois Press Association, 1962
Website: www.joecappo.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best overall ad book on my shelf, August 11, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: The Future of Advertising : New Media, New Clients, New Consumers in the Post-Television Age (Hardcover)

I probably own over twenty books on marketing and advertising; weighty tomes written by the greats and near-greats. But Joe Cappo's crisply written new book is the best global overview I've seen yet. It clearly describes how the advertising industry has evolved dramatically over the past few decades -- and then speculates on the future twists and turns that may come to pass on the "advertising journey."

Will TV fade away and disappear? Of course not, and Cappo is the first to tell us that. But new ways of handling the challenges of commercial clutter (and of personal video recorders such as TiVo) must be innovated. Is the print medium at risk in the future? Perhaps, and that means newspapers most of all. (As this book points out, newspapers have a problem because they own their costly and inefficient printing presses, and are committed to an antiquated distribution system consisting of trucks rumbling through metropolitan areas to deliver their burdens to readers' doors.) The Internet, which came out of nowhere in the 90's -- and caught most advertising professionals flat-footed -- will continue to have a growing and enormous impact on consumers and businesses. (FYI, Cappo tells us that a study covering usage of all media forms revealed that by April, 2002 fully 25% of respondents were getting their daily dose of news ONLINE. Amazing.)

I'm sort of an old codger with a lot of years logged at advertising agencies. But Cappo's book makes me wish I were a kid of 21 again -- bright-eyed and launching into a career in the provocative and ever-changing world of advertising.

So if you're looking for an informative, entertaining, "short course" on the past, present and future of the ad biz, buy this book. I gave it 5 stars. (And I'd have given it 6 if Amazon allowed that over-the-top option.)

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Advertising is the science that discovered how to quantify art., December 2, 2006

By 

David Howse "dhcc" (Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Future of Advertising: New Media, New Clients, New Consumers in the Post-Television Age (Paperback)

I don't get some of the comments (reviews listed). How can you say Cappo focuses too much on history? I wonder if anyone who thinks such a thing is really a media analyst ... I'm talking multiple regression analysis here, the past 100 years (weighted) of data that is made up of many variables and the outcome of each set. With this whe can assume a probability of what will happen before this year is out and future years (based on reasonable assumptions or trends).

That's statistical history and Cappo, though not mentioning regression, is using the theory (whether it's audience size, ad budgets, etc.)

Second, history is ethnography (the study of life stories of communities [generally speaking]), there is classical ethnography and there are many newer types such as usage ethnography. Sitting is people homes and watching how they watch TV etc.) If you think you know the history of advertising but you haven't used the above mentioned tools (and there are several more, sociology, psychology, women's studies etc.) THEN YOU DON'T KNOW ADVERTISING! - READ THIS BOOK! Unfortunately, if you read this book and you still don't get it, hook-up with some experts - not Joe Blow from the local print shop but Joe Cappo or someone as schooled. Alternatively, if you think you do know the history of advertising so well then why haven't you written a better book?

Now for some criticisms, TV dying... I'm not sure Joe actually said that. If he did say that, I think what he really meant to say was that TV is changing. If you don't read Joe's [former] rag, Advertising Age, then you are missing out. A major company (P&G?) announced two weeks ago it was repositioning its advertising towards TV!

Second, the end to commercials on TV? I actually believed without a critical thought that this was a reality. After discussing it with a colleague I was reminded of the all-time-greatest technical sore thumb, the flashing clock on the VCR. All the technology in the world isn't going to motivate someone to press more than one button. How can a society so trained in passive viewing (TV) be motivated to do more than press on, off, channel up, channel down? Fast-forward is about as complicated as most things get. But Joe seems sold on the idea that the top of the curve is going to change its behavior and enter the world of the early adopter/nerds? There needs to be a greater reward to alter behavior than not having to watch commercials. It took porn and free games to put computers or VCRs/DVDs in every household so I don't think the prospect of skipping commercials is a big enough reward for the first 95 percent of the curve.

Conclusion: I'd read this book five times if I had the time. IT IS insightful, especially chapter 11. I took about 22 separate notes from this book, so if you don't have time to read the whole book then read pages 30,32,36,37,45,46,47,49,51,52, 55,56,62,64,70, 160,206,227, and 228. I loved the insightful comment comparing Survivor and Abram Maslow.

If anyone has any opinions about what I have written I strongly encourage you to send me an email, I'd love to discuss advertising & marketing, especially how social sciences weigh in. We can probably help each other.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Good Read!, October 13, 2004

By 

Rolf Dobelli "getAbstract" (Switzerland) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Future of Advertising : New Media, New Clients, New Consumers in the Post-Television Age (Hardcover)

Once considered a glamorous, creative and positive influence on American popular culture, the advertising business has changed so dramatically it is almost unrecognizable today. Veteran journalist Joe Cappo uses a personal approach and an historical perspective to explain the problems advertising is facing. Two decades ago, some 20 major agencies, all independent and competing against each other, developed innovative, memorable campaigns for a variety of consumer products. But those days are over. Today, four global marketing communications holding companies control 55% of marketing expenditures. This consolidation curtailed creativity, which has resulted in agencies that produce very few memorable ads or integrated marketing efforts despite unprecedented resources. Refreshingly, Cappo does not temper his industry critique in this slightly disjointed, but well-written explanation, which is buttressed by short articles from other industry experts. Cappo sounds a wake-up call for agencies to reform themselves or lose out to more effective marketing approaches from upstart independent agencies or product manufacturers.we suggest that anyone responsible for advertising budgets or for developing marketing campaigns will benefit from Cappo's view of the past - and possible future - of advertising.