Jack Trout says How Asia Advertises is "one of the best books on advertising I have ever read". He of course follows in the footsteps of David Abbott in saying Jim's first book "may be the best book on advertising I've read".
And after him came Steve Henry who reviewed Jim's second book by saying "If you care about advertising you'll love this book."
What all this proves, apart from Jim being an excellent writer, is that advertising writers are not very good at book reviews. In the unlikely event Jim wanted my quote on his covers of Cutting Edge Advertising and Cutting Edge Commercials I would probably describe them as two of the best books on advertising I have ever bought and lent out.
His latest book - a collection of case studies from Asia - then, comes highly recommended. Judging from the variation in style the cases have been provided by the agencies themselves. It is organised by category - from apparel to travel and tourism - much like an award show. This is very useful if you want to show a reel of great ads to some clients - and then answer the inevitable 'yes, but did it work' questions with something like: "changes in perception improved by 32 per cent". Or 'the ads pulled in $0.5 billion in three months.'
Flicking through the book you start to feel like a client conducting a new business pitch. A dire situation is set up. The brilliant solution is presented. Glowing results are breathtakingly announced. All that's missing is the coffee and the stale sandwiches.
What this provides you with then is the ultimate insider's reference guide. If you are going up against another agency you can look up their best case studies and prepare accordingly. The difficulty of course is that most of the campaigns in here are both very good and very effective.
So far so good. The difficulty, if there is one, is that you get the feeling the book hasn't quite defined creative and marketing success.
Naturally some of the campaigns have achieved both distinctions. That is they have been recognised in major awards show and have a comprehensive third-party validated case study to go with them.
It's also nice, for instance, to read a quote by the marketing director of No Frills Funerals. It's nice because there is a marketing director of No Frills Funerals. You can also catch up on some of the excellent writing skills that are put to work presenting these cases. There were the odd few where the writing of the case study seemed to be better than the copy in the ads.
Conversely, I thought the Sunday campaign from Hong Kong, the Fevicol work from India and the Black Cat commercial from Thailand could have been included. But obviously with the scale and volume of work involved it's easy to overlook one or two.
What would be ideal from my point of view would be to directly relate award winners to results, taking up where Donald Gunn left off. The ability of any agency to spin its effectiveness needs to be tempered by the necessity of the work to have won some major awards as well. And if someone comes up short trying to describe the effectiveness of the pet burial services campaign then so much the better. The best way to put such a presentation together for now would be to start with this excellent book and then select the campaigns that suit your criteria. It will need some effort and, eventually, some updating. For that we can probably look forward to How Asia Advertises Part 2. And, no doubt, some more superlatives from the rest of the industry.
How Asia Advertises
By Jim Aitchison
Published by John Wiley & Sons, 406 pages
