Bizarre Sorcerers of London by Brian Cable
Bizarre Ad Campaigns That Translated Badly is an interesting little book that describes how poorly some ad campaigns have worked. It’s not all bad, as the authors admit in the preface, and there are a few gems for those of us who do have a creative side or can work with other people’s money to create a campaign that will really hit the mark. The authors describe several ad campaigns they themselves have worked on, as well as a couple of “wild card” campaigns that just didn’t quite work (one of them with a budget of one million dollars). It’s not a book that tell you how to create the next Mad Men campaign, but it’s certainly a fun, quick read and useful for people just starting out in business who may be thinking about doing ad campaigns.
Most of the book is about creating the concept for your ad campaign, the nuts and bolts of the campaign, and the creative aspects of making it. Part 1 is all about coming up with a concept for a campaign, putting that concept into reality, and the nuts and bolts of actually implementing that concept into an ad campaign. Part 2 of the book describes the more “out there” aspects of creating weird ads, and includes such bizarre ads as a toilet paper ad in the form of a balloon. There are several other short stories that illustrate a range of odd and approaches, from television ads to direct mail campaigns.
One thing that seems to be a common thread throughout B Sorcerers of London by Brian Cable is the author’s passion for advertising and his willingness to talk about it in the popular fashion. If you love advertising, this is one book that you’ll want to read. It’s short but rich with ideas and examples of odd ads that did a lot to advance the cause of advertising as we know it. It’s a quick read, but that’s the best part of it – you’ll get information and insight that you won’t get from many books on the subject. The strangeness and beauty of it all comes from Brian Cable’s love of marketing and his knowledge of what can make a campaign stand out among the crowd.
