The workings of advertising have always remained a bit of a mystery; until
about 1960 virtually nothing of the effectiveness of advertising was known.
There was even some doubt about whether advertising worked at all. In the
absence of facts, theories were developed up to fill the vacuum. These were soon
developed into doctrines, which became widely followed—fables that became
fashions. Not many of these theories were ever subjected to harsh scrutiny based
on factual knowledge, mainly because there was not much factual knowledge
available until recently.
John Philip Jones, bestselling author and internationally known advertising
scholar, has written a textbook to help evaluate these advertising “fables”
and “fashions,” and also to study the facts. He uses the patterns and trends
revealed by the accumulations of data from cutting-edge research to illustrate
the occasional incompleteness, inadequacy, and in some cases total
wrongheadedness of these fables and fashions. Each chapter then attempts to
describe one aspect of how advertising really works.
Unlike most other advertising textbooks, Fables, Fashions, and Facts
About Advertising is not written as a “how to” text, or as a
vehicle for war stories, or as a sales pitch. Instead, it is a book that
concentrates solely on describing how advertising works. Written to be
accessible to the general public with little or no experience studying
advertising, it makes the scholarship of an internationally renowned figure
accessible to students taking beginning advertising courses.
Fables, Fashions, and Facts About Advertising is ideal as a
core or supplemental text for courses in marketing, communication, journalism,
and related disciplines. This volume should also be useful to the
tens-of-thousands of business people whose careers are directly or indirectly
concerned with advertising.