I started in advertising at the end of the golden era. My bosses and mentors were two of the real Mad Men. In the 60’s, Ron Rosenfeld and Len Sirowitz created dozens of award winning campaigns at DDB.
Today great advertising in any category is tougher than ever to create.
And great advertising in publishing is even tougher that that. (Another post later on why.)
But last week there was a great four page ad for my friend Lee Child in The New Yorker.
Not just eye catching. And not just interesting. But take your breath away great. And it made me so happy to see it. Not just because I adore Lee.
No one can buy something they never heard of. So If we can get more publishers doing more terrific ads for more books more books will sell! Everyone will do better. Life will be grand.
Right.
Anyway.
Back to the point of the post.
What makes great advertising? Well many people much smarter than me have written tomes about it. But here’s my definition in a nutshell:
The ad has to 1. stop me, 2. engage me, 3. grip me in some way and 4. make me want/think about/crave/long for the damn product – or service.
So here’s Lee’s ad.
Yes it cost a fortune – it’s 4 pages in The New Yorker!
Yes it would be nice if all authors got great ads not just brand names. Or even just got ads.
But that’s not the point of this post.
The one and only point of this post is to point out that great ads can be done for books and Random House just did one for Lee’s book last week.
It’s four pages. Page one introduces the book.
The next three pages are a totally kick ass excerpt of the book with interesting, compelling, editorial comments in red.
Eye catching. Utterly gripping. A perfect demonstration of the unique selling proposition of one of Lee’s books.
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