Daily Archives: 10th November 2016

Free download In 1923 an advertising genius called Claude Hopkins wrote a booklet: ‘Scientific Advertising’. Here’s what Wikipedia says about it: “Scientific Advertising” was written by Claude C Hopkins in 1923 and is cited by many advertising and marketing personalities (such as David Ogilvy, Gary Halbert and Jay Abraham) as […]

Scientific Advertising

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Al Ries and Jack Trout’s 1970’s booklet ‘The Positioning Era’ summarised a gradual but significant development in advertising following the 1960’s ‘image’ advertising. Image advertising had taken over from the direct selling styles of traditional advertising, and the era of the USP (unique selling proposition) – though the newer developments […]

Marketing Warfare

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“Scientific Advertising” by Claude Hopkins is still rated by many greats as the real bible on advertising. This introduction to a 1960’s edition of the book is by the great David Ogilvy. If you haven’t seen ‘Scientific Advertising’ there is a downloadable version on my website here. Ogilvy’s introduction is […]

Claude Hopkins

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Al Ries and Laura Ries’ analysis of what advertising can do in the 2000’s, and what it can’t. Here’s a taster: “The purpose of advertising is not to build a brand, but to defend a brand once the brand has been built by other means, primarily public relations or third-party […]

PR vs. Advertising

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The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding by Al Ries and Laura Ries, published in 1998 by Profile books. More from Al Reis, this time with his daughter Laura who is also his business partner. ’22 immutable Laws’ is possibly an over-grand title, but the book is very pretty well packed […]

Laws of Branding

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Free download David Ogilvy commissioned and adopted excellent, deatiled, research into the effects of layout and typefaces on comprehension. The research and results are covered fully in Colin Wheildon’s book mentioned elsewhere on this website. (Colin is the man who did the research). But the attached file shows exactly what […]

Readable Layout

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If there were just one book to read on layout and design, this would be it. Wheildon’s research was commended and relied on by David Ogilvy, amongst others, and the book has a foreword by the great man. A lot of Wheildon’s research has been passed on and, in versions […]

Scientific design

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Jack Trout co-authored the original book on Positioning in 1980 with Al Ries. Here is a lecture he gave in 2012 to a marketing conference in Azerbaijan  – 2 hours including Q&A, and fascinating throughout. Whether or not you’ve read the book, this is a very clear outline of the theory […]

Positioning

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Al Ries, along with Jack Trout, is the father of the theory of Positioning*. Here he talks about how people perceive categories of products, and how brands relate to that. *Positioning is explained more fully in their other work. See this review as an example.

Categories or Brands

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