Content area
Full Text
Jones, John Philip, ed. 1998. How Advertising Works: The Role of Research, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 358 pp., $68 ($32 paper).
How Advertising Works contains twenty-nine chapters, some original, some reprints, fifteen written by practitioners, five by academics, and the remaining by the editor, John Philip Jones. The book is divided into four parts: Markets and Advertising; Research Before the Advertising Runs; Research After the Advertising Has Run; and Advertising Effects, Including Some Unexpected Ones. This easy-to-read basic book appears to have value for both the practitioner and academic, but it is not without its faults. Academics should read it if they have had no practical experience in advertising research, while practitioners should read it to learn about some of the new research methods available. But if readers are really interested in learning about the role of research in how advertising works, they will be disappointed. This book is more about the role of research in advertising effects and what advertising has worked in the past rather than how advertising actually works. Only a few of the twenty-nine chapters actually discuss how advertising works. The role of research in all of this is covered in Some detail, but mostly at a basic explanatory level.
Chapter 1, Introduction, by John Philip Jones introduces the reader to the advertising business and discusses the importance of research in the advertising process. Then, in an opinionated burst, he proposes a radical restructuring of advertising agencies. This discussion turns out to be nothing new. For example, he proposes that advertising agencies abandon the commission system. This proposal suggests that the author has not read the American advertising trade journals in years.
Chapter 2, The Advertising Process, by Timothy Joyce is one of the more interesting discussions in the book. Based on an earlier article, the author examines how the advertising process has evolved over the past few decades and how the research process has changed. He includes many new...