Something is rotten in the state of advertising. CEOs and marketers tell us that working with agencies is painful and laborious. Agency people tell us they feel undervalued, overworked and stifled by poor processes. And the poor old punter is left faced with advertising that is at best forgettable, and at worst insulting to the intelligence. Surely Advertising can be better than this?

“This book is full of common sense. Which is rare, so it’s actually full of uncommon sense.” Dave Trott

How as a businessperson or marketer can you get the most out of your advertising budget?
What to look for in an agency or the people you choose to work with?
What can help your advertising rise above the mass of messages out there?
What can advertising agencies do to improve the quality and effectiveness of their output?

We were having a cup of tea and a chat one morning when we had the idea for this book. In our opinion, the quality and effectiveness of advertising in general is not good enough. We think the way businesses work with agencies and the way that agencies organise themselves and develop advertising needs to be improved. It’s time the advertising industry had a much-needed kick up the proverbial. So we thought it would be helpful to collect the ideas and approaches that have helped us to make better advertising for our clients over the last ten years.

Whether you’re a business owner, chief executive, marketer or brand director who works with ad agencies, or an agency chief, planner, ad exec or creative, we hope you find this book thought-provoking and challenging. Most of all, we hope it helps you make better advertising. Put the kettle on…

“Vic and Andy have come up with a foolproof way to help you discover if you are a good agency. Ask yourself: ‘Dare I give this book to all my clients?’” Steve Harrison

“Get it, read it. You’ll feel better for it. More importantly you’ll do better as a result of it.” Brian Jacobs, The Cog Blog

Read more

Why do some advertising campaigns work and others fall flat?

Behavioural Psychology demonstrates that we process marketing and advertising messages in the same way that we process interpersonal communication. This is because humans have built-in ‘fixed action patterns’ that produce
consistent, predictable responses. These ‘fixed action patterns’ are unconscious hard-wired shortcuts that help us make decisions, behave or act more efficiently.

Many of these ‘fixed action patterns’ are well known in Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) and are used for creating rapid behavioural change. Perhaps it’s not suprising that these exact same patterns are used in marketing and advertising to increase acquisition, improve loyalty and reduce attrition.

In effect these patterns make your audience more likely to behave in predictable ways.

These patterns can be easily identified, measured and charted. This enables the effect of any form of advertising or marketing communication to be predicted.

Persuasive Marketing will introduce you to these patterns and how to use them effectively.

Read more