Waxing lyrical about advertising

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Are you influenced by advertising? Of course not, but you probably think that other people are…

Two new books survey the scene

In the introduction to Thames & Hudson’s revised and expanded edition of The Advertising Concept Book, the copywriter Pete Barry makes a distinction between ‘“ad man texts” – waxing lyrical about business-winning philosophies’, graphic design books, award books and ‘coffee table ad books that just look like cut-and-pasted awards books’. Advertising For People Who Don’t Like Advertising is devoted to the ideas underpinning the work of a particular agency (the trendy Amsterdam and Hoxton-based KesselsKramer, widely respected for its sometimes brutally honest ads yet generally shunning competitions for awards).

In The Advertising Concept Book Barry is keen to stress the amount of work unseen by the public. The final execution, he demonstrates, is merely the tip of an iceberg of industry. As if to reinforce his recommendation that students learn to think through drawing, all his illustrations are rendered as sketches. This is, perhaps, somewhat misleading, conveying an impression that the campaigns discussed were thus conceived. Indeed, this ploy may be thought rather akin to suggesting that Hovis is hand-made by bakers or that modern beer and lager companies employ brewers dressed in leather aprons and jerkins.

There certainly appears to be a consensus across various current advertising books as to which campaigns and which brands merit inclusion. Both Barry in The Advertising Concept Book and Peter Russell & Senta Slingerland in Game Changers (also reviewed in this issue of Cassone) present Johnnie Walker’s ‘The Man Who Walked Around the World’; both Barry and Malcolm Gee (in Advertising as Culture, see separate review in this issue) discuss Absolut vodka ads. Wonderbra, Dove, Barnardos, Pirelli and Honda are brands recurrently cited for their commissioning of newsworthy, innovative advertising. Posters for The Economist and print and screen ads for Levi’s and for VW and Guinness (equally conspicuous as sponsors) are featured. Ridley Scott (‘Bike Ride’), Tony Scott (‘The Hire’) and Tony Kaye (‘Twister’) here, as elsewhere, are appropriately name-checked as directors of outstandingly memorable executions.

KesselsKramer's Advertising For People Who Don’t Like Advertising (more blank space but of sketchbook quality) offers self-analysis, stated as a series of stock questions and answers, and some criticism of advertising as it currently operates as an industry.

While some of the brands covered command global attention (Coca-Cola, Sony, Nike, Ikea, African ads and KesselsKramer’s European ads for Diesel) it is also notable that many major agencies operate as global enterprises while responding differently to regional markets and audiences.

The Advertising Concept Book: Think Now, Design Later by Pete Barry is published by Thames & Hudson, 2012. 296 pp. ISBN 978 0 500 51623

Advertising for People Who Don’t Like Advertising by KesselsKramer is published by Laurence King 2012. 240 pp., 100 colour illus. £19.95  ISBN 978 1 85669 825 2