Ever wondered where those curiously strong mints got their name? Or that certain malternative? The stories behind those popular product names and a lot more can be found in Evan Morris’s wonderfully entertaining book From Altoids to Zima.
Evan takes you behind the scenes to reveal the thinking — or sometimes lack of thinking — that went into naming each product. Among the many interesting facts, you’ll find out what the Ms in M&Ms stand for; if Scotch tape was invented in Scotland; and why a cereal that contains neither grapes nor nuts is called Grape Nuts.
The story of each product…
The animal at the top of this post is called a Fisher, and up until I read an article in the New York Times about him — where he was described as a ratty looking creature with fangs and claws that was in the habit of gnawing on the face of house pets — I had never heard of him.
So what does this mangy little guy have to do with advertising? Well, he’s an idea, and for me, he’s a pretty sticky one. Because he’s something that I had no awareness of at all until I read about, and now am…
It’s not Ogilvy on Advertising.
It’s a novel!
Sure, David Ogilvy wrote a great book about advertising. So did Bob Levinson and Peter Mayle. But the absolute best book ever written about advertising is the novel e. by Matt Beaumont.
A novel you say? How can that be better than a classic written by one of the masters of advertising?
Easy. Because e. shows what it’s like to really work in the rollicking and often surreal world of advertising.
The novel, told completely in email form, is about a pitch for the Coke account by London agency Miller Shanks. Through a blizzard of emails, Beaumont captures…
New social sites come and go like fads in the early 90’s. It can be confusing to keep up. Some people jump right into a new site, eager to be one of the first members. Private invite-only launches create a nice buzz in beta. Many people however, wait until a site has passed the test of time, or at least until they understand it. Fortunately, sites like mashable exist to guide people through the social media landscape. Business 2.0 magazine, by Time Warner was a good source of information, but they have closed the publication due to slow ad sales. If…
If you’ve read Chip Kidd’s novels, you may have asked yourself a question I’ve asked myself—why didn’t I think of that? Kidd’s second book The Learners has just come out, and he brings back the main character from his first novel, Happy, for a journey through life after college. The world of advertising is the backdrop for a story about advertising and a larger story about life. The new book cover done in red, white and black makes a poetic statement about the plot. Happy is working on a newspaper ad, and that ad serves as a springboard and a tool to advance…
I recently completed an amazing book, The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott and it is a book that readers of BTB will certainly find useful. The book sets out to educate the reader about “how to use news releases, blogs, podcasting, viral marketing and online media to reach buyers directly” and it succeeds in doing so.
Many business books tend to spend too much time on ideas and leave the reader with few actionable items. This is not one of those books at all
