Rarely has a book about advertising created such a commotion as this brilliant account of the principles of successful advertising. Published in 1961, Reality in Advertising was listed for weeks on the general best-seller lists, and is today acknowledged to be advertising's greatest classic. It has been translated into twelve languages-French, Japanese, Spanish, Dutch, German, Italian, Portuguese, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Hebrew-and has been published in twenty-one separate editions in fifteen countries. Leading ...
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Rarely has a book about advertising created such a commotion as this brilliant account of the principles of successful advertising. Published in 1961, Reality in Advertising was listed for weeks on the general best-seller lists, and is today acknowledged to be advertising's greatest classic. It has been translated into twelve languages-French, Japanese, Spanish, Dutch, German, Italian, Portuguese, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Hebrew-and has been published in twenty-one separate editions in fifteen countries. Leading business executives, and the advertising cognoscenti, hail it as "the best book for professionals that has ever come out of Madison Avenue." (For typical comments see back of jacket.) Rosser Reeves says: "The book attempts to formulate certain theories of advertising, many quite new, and all based on 30 years of intensive research." These theories, whose value has been proved in the marketplace, all revolve around the central concept that success in selling a product is the key criterion of advertising. In the course of explaining his own hard-headed approach, Mr. Reeves shows why the ad campaigns for many products are just so much money poured down the drain. He has some devastating things to say about advertising's misguided men: the "aesthetes" and the "puffers" who put art and technique ahead of the client's sales; and he punctures many of the misguided philosophies which lower the efficiency of advertising, rather than raising it. But even more important is the thoroughness and clarity with which he explains many of the mysteries of how to write advertising that produces these sales. Here, in short, is a concise, forcefully written guide that has been called "a 'Rosetta Stone' for the advertising business"- an essential book for anyone who works in advertising, or uses advertising extensively. It is today required reading in hundreds of great corporations and many of the world's leading business schools.
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Add this copy of Reality in Advertising to cart. $16.37, good condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Baltimore rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Halethorpe, MD, UNITED STATES, published 2015 by Widener Classics.
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Add this copy of Reality in Advertising to cart. $19.02, good condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Atlanta rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Austell, GA, UNITED STATES, published 1961 by Knopf.
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Very Good. Very Good condition. Very Good dust jacket. (advertising, united states ) A copy that may have a few cosmetic defects. May also contain light spine creasing or a few markings such as an owner's name, short gifter's inscription or light stamp.
Rosser Reeves was a dynamic and powerful copywriter one of the few in 1960 inducted into the Copywriters Hall of Fame. There's a reason for that: He knew and practiced reality in advertising. He stripped away the myths that were long held and that are still held today. He provided his clients with the practice of good principles that you'll read in this book.
Any copywriter or advertiser who is not fortunate enough to own a copy of this book is a sad character indeed. It is a gem. If you have to pay $300 for it, buy it. In your hands you'll own the most dynamic truth ever written about selling your clients products and services and writing great copy, making advertising pay major dividends.
You say this book was written in 1960. How valuable could it be today? Perhaps more valuable than many books being offered up by contemporary writers. What you discover in this book are practices that most people no longer use. That's sad because they're taking money, profits, off the table. They're losing market share. Advertisers are paying for sales copy and ad campaigns that will never work because big egos are involved.
While many of the books written today about advertising on the Internet, for example, will be outdated in a few years, this book, I venture, will never be outdated. While many copywriters today attempt to be great writers who are admired by their peers; writers who are puffy and more interested in selling their own skills than their client's products, Rosser Reeves was interested in one thing --- selling every widget he could for his clients. That's what this book is all about. That's why I love it and value it. That's why it is indeed a classic.
In the book, Reeves shoots down many of his contemporaries. He shoots down myths. Yes, he talks about the unique selling proposition, which he helped make famous. The USP is remarkably important. Yet few copywriters even bother to discover their client's USP. They're not salespeople. They want a showcase for their own so-called talent and not a tool with which to sell products. Trouble with all this is, you simply can't sell without having a handle on the USP.
Reeves wrote copy to sell. He didn't write to win awards. He knew that awards were unimportant. He gives the example of two television commercials that the advertising community said were terrible. They laughed about them and explained how they would make them better. And yet, these two commercials made their advertisers rich --- they outsold all other commercials that the ad people thought were so great. You see, ad people are not good judges of what's good. The consumer is the ultimate and most effective judge. The consumer is the only award that counts.
I've read some unkind reviews about this book. I challenge anyone to find a greater book for the advertising professional. I have some four decades of advertising experience under my belt and I learn each time I read this book. I value the words as if they were freshly found gold coins. If I had a choice of being a copywriter like Rosser Reeves and one of these "gurus" of today who is so in love with his own words and style and wants to showcase his own talents, I'll choose to model after Reeves.
For in the end, advertising and copywriting is about selling the client's product or service to as many consumers as possible. And that's what Reality in Advertising is all about.
