Ad Nauseam A Survivor's Guide To American Consumer Culture Edited by Carrie Mclaren and Jason Torchinsky
This book is a compilation of essays from the magazine Stay Free. These essays are critiques of American consumer cultue. They focus on various subjects in advertising covering such topics as the history of medical quackery in advertising, corporate culture, advertising techniques, and other anti-consumerist topics. Many of the essays are quite funny. There is a mix of history, criticism, surveys, interviews, photographs, and pranks.
There is quite a bit on how advertising effects our daily lives. For example the reason we cannot get free glasses of water at restaurants without asking is because of the recent trend selling bottled water. Also, advertising has moved into our schools with pictures of candy in our textbooks and jury selection being effected by television shows like Miami Vice and L.A. Law.
The book is helpful if you want to immunize yourself from impulse buying. The advertising tactics of raw emotional appeal, pictures instead of words, and convincing people consumption is automatically good are critiqued. We learn how advertisers created an emphasis halitosis and dry skin as well as many other modern maladies.
The best thing about this book is the humor. There is a very funny article on the history of "Subliminal Seduction" debunking it. The article makes reference to the book, The Clam Bake Orgy by Wilson Brian Key one of the silliest books I have ever read.
There are black and white pictures throughout the book. Some of the better ones are the Marlboro baby and a tattoo of the Nikes logo on a persons ankle. In addition to pictures there are quizzes at the end of some chapters.
This was an entertaining and informative book to read. It might turn off some people with its anti-suv, prank lovng, privacy oriented, remove all ads from school political correctness, but if you want to convince your dog to love your ipod this is the book for you.
Showing posts with label advertising. Show all posts
Showing posts with label advertising. Show all posts
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Teach Yourself Copywriting, 2nd Edition, J.Jonathan Gabay, c2000-- Comments
Teach Yourself Copywriting , 2nd Edition by J. Jonathan Gabay, c2000, is a book about how to write advertising copy. It was originally written for a British audience, but it translates well for the United States market. One of the reasons I read this book was that I think many blogs are basically syndicated advertising copy. Things like pay per post and other paid blogging sites make this even more true. I think it is important to understand how this style of writing works because I think it affects which blogs become successful. Many of the most successful blogs like Marketing Deviant, one of my favorite blogs are about advertisement. http://marketingdeviant.com/
I am going to go over some of the things I read about in this book which I found interesting and useful to me. The first is that advertising is about creating a connection on an emotional level between a buyer and a seller. The basic objective is tell the person what they are going to gain by buying a particular item.
Like blogs, it is very informal language. Grammar is not a strong point in advertising language. The objective is to identify as closely as possible with the consumer so they will buy your product. Coca-cola, Dow, and other giant marketers want you to identify personally with their brands so you will buy them. The bigger the company the more they want you to have a personal committment to them. A good thing to remember if you want to protect yourself from advertisers is that you don't have to be personally committed to companies like Marlboro or Nike.
Part of this committment is about identifying who you are. You are a yuppy, road warrior, buppy, generation x, baby boomer, or punk rocker. The easier it is to identify who you are the easier it is for an advertiser to directly address you. This is why when you go to the supermarket, they offer a discount card to collect your personal information. You do not have to get a Macy's card, a Waldbaums card, or anything else. Your personal information is a commodity to advertisers.
Language is simplified to be more informal and thus closer to you. This is the same for blogs. Advertisers and copywriters use cliches like buy now, yours free, limited time offer, cheap cheap cheap, we are here to serve you to create closer identity with the customer. The aim is create recognition where there is none. The language is colloquial, for example, "Where's the beef?"
The aim is often to address universals like love, happiness, revenge. There is an idea that if they connect with you on a basic level, you will buy their products. This book cites an example, that in Hollywood there are supposed to be only 11 film plots.
The objective is to get you to immediately. It is believed that there are 1 1/2 seconds to get through to a person with a headline before it loses its effects. Thus you are bombarded with statments like "Don't Walk on the Grass." Part of sales and advertising is to create immediacy. In newspaper classifieds, it is supposed to be only 3/4 of a second to hold a persons attention. The simple patience to wait a few seconds longer before becoming attracted to something often can break a sales pitch, or an impulse buy in my experience.
There are some interesting ideas which come out of advertising that are useful. One of my favorites is readability. This means how hard is your blog to read. Blogs which are hard to read don't necessarily get as much traffic. I think my blog is about 7th grade reading level.
http://juicystudio.com/services/readability.php#readweb
This book covers a lot of different mediums. I am not sure that I can really focus on television, film, or radio that much. However, we have been scouted to do episodes of some television series on occassion. There is a small financial reward in this. I think we were once scouted for an episode of CSI.
The section on newspaper advertising is rather interesting. We do occassional newspaper ads. Usually we have three lines to put an announcement for a program in the newspaper. This has to be very concise and accurate. I rather liked the books suggestion to focus on action words when advertising in newspapers. The same is pretty much true for libraries and radio stations. We get about three sentences for a community services announcement on radio.
The section on posters was useful as well. He says there are basically three parts to a poster, an intriguing headline, some graphics, and a few company logos. I guess in a way that the fliers I am producing are a bit too complicated.
I can't imagine advertising in trains and subways. However, my experience is that advertisements in buses and trains are much more complicated than posters and billboards outside of trains. People will be sitting for a long time, enough time to read at least a couple full paragraphs of text. In the New York City subways, there is a campaign caled "Poetry in Motion" put together by the Poetry Society to encourage people to read poetry. I guess it would be a form of advertisement.
http://www.poetrysociety.org/motion/mapsite/pimpoems/newyork/nyindex.html
There is a brief section on websites. His main point is that it is important to keep websites simple to read and use. The website is not a mass marketing tool, but a direct marketing tool aimed at individual readers. You should include words that keep the structure flowing like but, however, so, because. You need conviction or you will lose your audience immediately.
This book was useful to read. It is not a book which I would buy immediately. It is the kind of thing which I would check out of the library first.
I am going to go over some of the things I read about in this book which I found interesting and useful to me. The first is that advertising is about creating a connection on an emotional level between a buyer and a seller. The basic objective is tell the person what they are going to gain by buying a particular item.
Like blogs, it is very informal language. Grammar is not a strong point in advertising language. The objective is to identify as closely as possible with the consumer so they will buy your product. Coca-cola, Dow, and other giant marketers want you to identify personally with their brands so you will buy them. The bigger the company the more they want you to have a personal committment to them. A good thing to remember if you want to protect yourself from advertisers is that you don't have to be personally committed to companies like Marlboro or Nike.
Part of this committment is about identifying who you are. You are a yuppy, road warrior, buppy, generation x, baby boomer, or punk rocker. The easier it is to identify who you are the easier it is for an advertiser to directly address you. This is why when you go to the supermarket, they offer a discount card to collect your personal information. You do not have to get a Macy's card, a Waldbaums card, or anything else. Your personal information is a commodity to advertisers.
Language is simplified to be more informal and thus closer to you. This is the same for blogs. Advertisers and copywriters use cliches like buy now, yours free, limited time offer, cheap cheap cheap, we are here to serve you to create closer identity with the customer. The aim is create recognition where there is none. The language is colloquial, for example, "Where's the beef?"
The aim is often to address universals like love, happiness, revenge. There is an idea that if they connect with you on a basic level, you will buy their products. This book cites an example, that in Hollywood there are supposed to be only 11 film plots.
The objective is to get you to immediately. It is believed that there are 1 1/2 seconds to get through to a person with a headline before it loses its effects. Thus you are bombarded with statments like "Don't Walk on the Grass." Part of sales and advertising is to create immediacy. In newspaper classifieds, it is supposed to be only 3/4 of a second to hold a persons attention. The simple patience to wait a few seconds longer before becoming attracted to something often can break a sales pitch, or an impulse buy in my experience.
There are some interesting ideas which come out of advertising that are useful. One of my favorites is readability. This means how hard is your blog to read. Blogs which are hard to read don't necessarily get as much traffic. I think my blog is about 7th grade reading level.
http://juicystudio.com/services/readability.php#readweb
This book covers a lot of different mediums. I am not sure that I can really focus on television, film, or radio that much. However, we have been scouted to do episodes of some television series on occassion. There is a small financial reward in this. I think we were once scouted for an episode of CSI.
The section on newspaper advertising is rather interesting. We do occassional newspaper ads. Usually we have three lines to put an announcement for a program in the newspaper. This has to be very concise and accurate. I rather liked the books suggestion to focus on action words when advertising in newspapers. The same is pretty much true for libraries and radio stations. We get about three sentences for a community services announcement on radio.
The section on posters was useful as well. He says there are basically three parts to a poster, an intriguing headline, some graphics, and a few company logos. I guess in a way that the fliers I am producing are a bit too complicated.
I can't imagine advertising in trains and subways. However, my experience is that advertisements in buses and trains are much more complicated than posters and billboards outside of trains. People will be sitting for a long time, enough time to read at least a couple full paragraphs of text. In the New York City subways, there is a campaign caled "Poetry in Motion" put together by the Poetry Society to encourage people to read poetry. I guess it would be a form of advertisement.
http://www.poetrysociety.org/motion/mapsite/pimpoems/newyork/nyindex.html
There is a brief section on websites. His main point is that it is important to keep websites simple to read and use. The website is not a mass marketing tool, but a direct marketing tool aimed at individual readers. You should include words that keep the structure flowing like but, however, so, because. You need conviction or you will lose your audience immediately.
This book was useful to read. It is not a book which I would buy immediately. It is the kind of thing which I would check out of the library first.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Morning Thoughts, Blog Traffic
This morning I got on the train to work. I was sitting drinking tea with lemon and honey. The train was mostly empty because it was a Saturday. It is very nice to be on an empty train with very few people around. It gives one an almost expansive peaceful feeling. I wasn't reading this morning because I wanted to have my head clear for the day. Sometimes, I don't read because I am tired or I just want to think of absolutely nothing and just sit.
It is also nice to look out the window. Usually, you see various brightly colored graffiti, tires, and industrial landscape. Sometimes there are patches of trees and greenery, or you can look out onto a street. It has a lulling effect.
It was rather odd. Directly across from me was poster. It had a picture of a happy fish and a sad fish. I noticed it was about something called The School of Practical Philosophy. I thought it rather odd that they might be teaching something like this. Apparently, it has been part of New York University since 1964.
http://www.philosophyworks.org/landing/who.php
The idea was rather intriguing. I am thinking a bit about it today. Sometimes, the right thoughts are everything.
I still haven't started writing my review for Superclass. I have to promise myself and you that I will start writing the review tonight. I usually write it out longhand then transfer it to the computer. Writing with a pen has a different feeling to it than writing on a computer. I like the feel of the pen on paper for the first draft of a review. I learn better sometimes when I can feel and see what I am doing.
I wrote some notes on the train home for the review. It is kind of awkward writing on a subway train. I feel a little cramped when I am doing it, but I do it anyway. So, I have enough material to write a review in the morning.
I also will watch Stardust by Neil Gaiman tomorrow. I actually finished watching it tonight. I would give the film three stars. It was light entertainment; not as good as the book.
___________________________________________________________________
I am thinking about blog traffic today. I tried something a little nutty today. I clicked on 300 entrecard adds, it took me five and a half hours. It seemed to be almost a waste of time. I wanted to see what the results would be.
Like most people, I am trying to increase the traffic to my blog. It seems to be an incredible popularity contest. The first person who has the most traffic wins. Of course, they don't win anything monetarily unless they are selling or advertising something. I actually do have a goal. I would like to have by December, 1000 unique visitors per day. I know this is a tall order. I don't intend to buy advertisements to do it either. It is a kind of wishful goal that points towards creating a very popular site.
One of the things, I know I will have to do is learn how advertising writing works. One of the most successful science fiction writers, Frederik Pohl, wrote advertising copy. One of his most successful books was The Space Merchants, a classic of science fiction. I think part of his success was writing in a style that sold the book to the reader. I think many of the bestselling books on the New York Times list do this. They don't just write the novel to write a novel, but to sell an appealing idea to the reader.
It is also nice to look out the window. Usually, you see various brightly colored graffiti, tires, and industrial landscape. Sometimes there are patches of trees and greenery, or you can look out onto a street. It has a lulling effect.
It was rather odd. Directly across from me was poster. It had a picture of a happy fish and a sad fish. I noticed it was about something called The School of Practical Philosophy. I thought it rather odd that they might be teaching something like this. Apparently, it has been part of New York University since 1964.
http://www.philosophyworks.org/landing/who.php
The idea was rather intriguing. I am thinking a bit about it today. Sometimes, the right thoughts are everything.
I still haven't started writing my review for Superclass. I have to promise myself and you that I will start writing the review tonight. I usually write it out longhand then transfer it to the computer. Writing with a pen has a different feeling to it than writing on a computer. I like the feel of the pen on paper for the first draft of a review. I learn better sometimes when I can feel and see what I am doing.
I wrote some notes on the train home for the review. It is kind of awkward writing on a subway train. I feel a little cramped when I am doing it, but I do it anyway. So, I have enough material to write a review in the morning.
I also will watch Stardust by Neil Gaiman tomorrow. I actually finished watching it tonight. I would give the film three stars. It was light entertainment; not as good as the book.
___________________________________________________________________
I am thinking about blog traffic today. I tried something a little nutty today. I clicked on 300 entrecard adds, it took me five and a half hours. It seemed to be almost a waste of time. I wanted to see what the results would be.
Like most people, I am trying to increase the traffic to my blog. It seems to be an incredible popularity contest. The first person who has the most traffic wins. Of course, they don't win anything monetarily unless they are selling or advertising something. I actually do have a goal. I would like to have by December, 1000 unique visitors per day. I know this is a tall order. I don't intend to buy advertisements to do it either. It is a kind of wishful goal that points towards creating a very popular site.
One of the things, I know I will have to do is learn how advertising writing works. One of the most successful science fiction writers, Frederik Pohl, wrote advertising copy. One of his most successful books was The Space Merchants, a classic of science fiction. I think part of his success was writing in a style that sold the book to the reader. I think many of the bestselling books on the New York Times list do this. They don't just write the novel to write a novel, but to sell an appealing idea to the reader.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Ending Powells List
I have decided to end my Powell's Affiliate List. After four months nobody bought a single book from the affiliate list. I thought that people would choose from both the affiliate list and the embedded amazon images. It turns out that nobody bought anything from the Powell's list. People have bought a few books from the embedded Amazon images. I am going to keep the Powell's search box in case someone wants to buy anything from there.
It was an interesting experiment. I thought that if I put up a sidebar with an alphabetical list of titles, then wrote about each title with an embedded image it would draw sales from both places. I have learned a bit about how people put together blogs to sell various things.
The thing which seems to work best for me is advertising; adsense and project wonderful (I am up to 44 cents with Project Wonderful halfway to a can of soda.) Maybe if I found something more expensive to advertise I would be better off selling a few items. However, I don't think camera equipment and laptops would match with my blog. I'll think about it some more.
I have to ponder some more on what it means to have a blog site with advertising on it. It does not seem to be that effective of a medium for sales. I may try to sell some book and information related gadgets.
I am off today because I am working this Saturday. I was off yesterday because of Presidents Day. This is the benefit of a government job.
I changed my sitecounter to sitemeter from statcounter. Statcounter starts charging for statistics once your site reaches a certain amount of visitors. I am not into paying for things.
It was an interesting experiment. I thought that if I put up a sidebar with an alphabetical list of titles, then wrote about each title with an embedded image it would draw sales from both places. I have learned a bit about how people put together blogs to sell various things.
The thing which seems to work best for me is advertising; adsense and project wonderful (I am up to 44 cents with Project Wonderful halfway to a can of soda.) Maybe if I found something more expensive to advertise I would be better off selling a few items. However, I don't think camera equipment and laptops would match with my blog. I'll think about it some more.
I have to ponder some more on what it means to have a blog site with advertising on it. It does not seem to be that effective of a medium for sales. I may try to sell some book and information related gadgets.
I am off today because I am working this Saturday. I was off yesterday because of Presidents Day. This is the benefit of a government job.
I changed my sitecounter to sitemeter from statcounter. Statcounter starts charging for statistics once your site reaches a certain amount of visitors. I am not into paying for things.
Monday, January 14, 2008
Advertising And Sales on This Blog
Advertisment for the 1913 Encyclopedia Britannica
I've had the first time in a while to just look at the news today. Most of it is slightly off putting. I wish they had some more positive news going on in the world.
I went into my storefronts sections and erased all of my commission junction storefronts. They seem to be a waste of time. I got 353 impressions but no sales. I think if this was advertising impressions, I might have made a small amount of money. Straight advertising might work better than attempting to sell things.
The other option is to find some really unique book or book related items to sell.
I still haven't made a single sale from Powells. I am still going to use it as an information source for the books I've read. People are looking at the books list, but not buying a single thing. Again, if it had been advertising, it might have worked better. Sponsorship might work better.
I also went into my Amazon storefront and found no sales. A big $0. So I am not making money on this blog. I have to go back and think about what I am going to do. I will be looking at those wicked places which give ad sponsorship. I might try something different with my reviews. Almost all of the review sites I have looked at have a picture of the book with a link embedded to Amazon. I might join the herd and do this. Most people don't seem to mind this because the picture adds to the review.
I think people will like this blog better with less advertising links. A lot of people hate advertising in blogs.
Maybe, I'll take some time and even look at places like Problogger and John Chow. Scary to think of it. I was reading Problogger a minute ago.
I still haven't gotten the book I have on hold on the business of blogging. Maybe, this is meant to be a personal hobby. I am really enjoying doing this. It has helped me improve my writing tremendously.
I was looking at some marketing blogs and found something fairly entertaining. Marketing Deviant has translated The Art of War into a business poem which is kind of interesting. It follows the same tradition of using classic military books as strategy books for business like Musashi's, The Art of War.
http://marketingdeviant.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/art-of-war-poem-ebook.pdf
I've put in some little Amazon picture boxes of books. Please let me know if this works for you.
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