Adland: A Global History of Advertising [Hardcover]

"Consumers know exactly what they want. They want it all... They're not remotely confused." Thus said Kevin Roberts, the worldwide CEO of Saatchi and Saatchi, one of the most famous of global advertising firms. But he must feel that even the unconfused consumers need direction, and it is the job of advertisers to give it, although I can't help remembering Lily Tomlin's line that without advertising, people would just wander the aisles of stores purposelessly without doing anything. Roberts was talking to Mark Tungate, a British journalist who specializes in media and advertising, and who has now written _Adland: A Global History of Advertising_ (Kogan Page). You can't get away from advertising, but you don't see what is going on behind all the clever slogans and slick photography, so Tungate's book is a window on a world that is otherwise invisible to us. Everyone who picks up this book will know some of the advertisements described, but because the book is a global assessment, no one will recognize them all. However, there are themes that run through all the states that make up Adland, and smart advertisers will (like smart novelists or smart architects) pay attention to the history of their field described here, and smart consumers will come away with an increased understanding of how advertising does its job.

Advertising agencies all over the world, and throughout advertising history, seem to come in two parts, the creatives and the pragmatists. The creatives are the ones who feel that an artistic (broadly defined, of course) creation inspires the customers to buy. A creative director of a French agency told the author, "Working in advertising is one of the few ways you can be creative and make money at the same time." That is perhaps exaggeration, but advertising has proven a magnet for creative people. Some of them have gotten a start in advertising and gone on to more "legitimate" creativity; Tungate lists as advertising graduates Salman Rushdie, Len Deighton, Sir Ridley Scott, and many others. The pragmatists are eager to sell based on facts, research, and statistics. "Advertisers are not spending billions to decorate media," said one agency head who belonged to the pragmatist school, "Their messages are not meant as ornaments." The balance between creativity and pragmatism is different in each agency, or advertising era, or even within nations, but there is a bottom line. Commenting on creative awards (and there is an annual awards ceremony for advertisers in Cannes, of all places), a former agency vice-chairman said, "Creative awards are your report card - they enable you to keep track of how you're doing. But you can't let them become your goal. The best reward is making the cash registers ring."

But there is plenty to be said for a catchy and creative ad, no matter its financial success. Tungate examines the stories behind plenty of the classics (and who cares if they brought in customers?), like the witty one-page, black and white ads for the old Volkswagen beetle, the "We Try Harder" of Avis, the pregnant man campaign for the Health Education Council in England ("Would you be more careful if it was you that got pregnant?"), the "1984" Apple ad broadcast during the Superbowl, the deliberately shocking images of Benetton, and many more. Plenty of these were the ideas of young Turks moving into the advertising game, eager players insistent on making a name for themselves. Over and over again, Tungate shows how these players then eased into more consistent, less risky campaigns and new young Turks took over. Tungate's book is a valiant attempt to keep historic track of the players and the agencies, which swap team members and consolidate at often dizzying paces in these pages. He writes with a genuine appreciation of good advertising, and his jocular journalistic prose is extremely readable. There will always be philosophical and creative shifts in advertising, but a case could be made that the rate of change has never been greater than now. One of the most recent pitches analyzed here, from just last year, was for the Onitsuka Tiger sports shoe, featuring members of the company's staff (dubbed for this performance "The Onitsuka Tiger National Choir") singing a nonsense song. The result was a hit on the Web, and viewers were invited to send in their own karaoke performance of the song to win a pair of shoes. It was neither print nor TV, so the ad was from a completely new world, but it was funny and catchy, so it was also from a classic tradition. _Adland_ gives a history to understand the traditions within a bustling and influential business realm.

I love advertising. So I naturally love this book. It gives a complete view of it all. You'll meet the white shoe Madison Avenue agencies and the Jewish agency people. You'll meet the British ad people. You'll meet them all.

It starts with the likes of our beloved Claude Hopkins, as it should. From there it goes into more modern agencies. But alas, you'll also learn about an all but forgotten very important advertising venue, the soap opera and how it sold a lot of stuff to a lot of people for a very long time.

If you're in the advertising business, you must read this. This is your industry as it really is and was. If you're a casual reader of anything to do with marketing, read this. You'll love it.

Highly recommended.

Susanna K. Hutcheson, Creative Director
Power Communications LLC

AD LAND is the first book to explore the development of advertising from an international perspective rather than the usual regional, domestic focus. As such it is a recommended pick for any college-level business library strong in advertising and marketing history: it considers the origins and trends of modern advertising, providing a history of past ad approaches and their evolution into modern ad innovations. Interviews with dozens of the leading names in advertising accompany this excellent report.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

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