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confessions from an ad man by dan s. kennedy

I grew up in advertising and have spent thirty years as an ad man, at least in part. And I have an insider’s confession. Most advertising is abject failure. It makes a lot more money for the ad agencies, production houses, and media than for the actual advertisers. At the corporate level, millions are spent on advertising that everybody notices but nobody remembers what it’s selling, that wins awards but loses market share, and that is deliberately designed to defy accurate measurement and accountability. At the small business and entrepreneurial level, bland, vanilla, me-too ads are copied ad infinitum, in a parade of the blind leading the blind, again absent accurate measurement and accountability. As a result, just about every business owner goes through life endlessly disappointed and frustrated with his or her advertising, grudgingly investing, often only under duress or with an attitude of surrender.

Bill Glazer first changed all that in his own main-street retail businesses, then for several thousand retailers throughout America in his same category, and then for thousands more retailers in a wide variety of product categories, and now for an even broader range of businesses. I can’t imagine there is another person who has as much influence and impact on business owners’ movement from antiquated, traditional, poorly performing advertising to entirely new and radically different, direct-response-based advertising that consistently delivers extraordinary return on investment and competitive advantage. He is quietly cursed in some traditional advertising circles. He is celebrated daily by tens of thousands of business owners.

I have worked with highly successful business owners—from small, local shop owners to CEOs of privately held mid-sized companies including those on the Inc. 500 fastest-growth companies list to CEOs of companies as large as $1 billion in annual sales—and evaluated their advertising and marketing, for which I am paid very substantial fees, beginning at $16,800 a day. When I saw what Bill Glazer had done with his “advertising transformation” for his own retail businesses, I instantly recognized he’d braved the bold and outrageous to do something unique that could go far beyond simply turbo-charging his own stores’ sales and profits. His results spoke loudly as well. I urged him to take what he had learned, developed, and perfected to the other business owners in his industry, and a new, influential changeagent was born; a literal revolution in advertising—in a rather stodgy retail category—was launched.

Thanks to this unusual book, you can harvest the best benefits of all this for your own business quickly and easily.

I say this is a very unusual book for three reasons.

First, its overall approach to advertising is not just different—it’s outrageously different! Most books about advertising are anything but. They are, frankly, regurgitated mush with old labels papered over with new.

Second, it is based on real-world, real-business results. Maybe big company executives can afford the luxury of endlessly experimenting with ideas and theories about advertising birthed by fuzzy-headed professors at Harvard Business School and Madison Avenue’s ad agency “creatives,” who love drum-beating bunnies, talking and dancing lizards, and angry cavemen despite the fact that most consumers can’t correctly name the products or companies being advertised, let alone enunciate any beneficial reasons to immediately seek out the product or company. Maybe they can afford such foolishness. You probably can’t. But you CAN take confidence from the fact that every single one of the 108 different examples shown to you in this book, and by extension at its Web site, come from proven, successful use by real businesses. No matter how radical and outrageous it appears, it’s the real advertising that really works. No other author on this subject has ever assembled so many completely proven, highly valuable examples in one low-priced book.

When I say “valuable,” I mean it. On the rare occasions that Bill accepts private clients and develops advertising for them, he is paid such huge sums that most freelance ad copywriters are shocked and dismayed. To get any one of the winning campaigns you see here done for you from scratch could easily cost upwards from $10,000 to $25,000. This kind of experience-based expertise is pretty much unavailable to most main-street businesses—made accessible for the first time ever, right here. Further, these examples have produced, in aggregate, millions and millions of dollars for the business owners using them, and for many of the individual owners, transformed the competitive position and profitability of their businesses. Any way you wish to do the accounting, this book hands over to you more than a million dollars’ worth of proven, profitable advertising easily translated and used by you. Further, there are breakthrough strategies for every media and purpose: yellow pages, newspaper, magazine, radio, TV, signage, direct-mail; attracting new customers or clients; bringing present customers back more often; upgrading customers; rescuing lost customers; bringing people in to your place of business in a steady stream or massive stampede; creating appointments for salespeople at your business or in the field—it’s ALL here.

Third, it is a book to be used, not merely read. If you have a good, fun read and then place this on a high shelf, you miss the point and cheat yourself. It’s actually a misnomer to even call this a book at all. It is more of a “magical toolbox,” a cross between a sorcerer’s secrets and a skilled mechanic’s best tools, to be drawn from again and again, day in and day out; to repair your present advertising and fix the erratic and disappointing return on your present advertising investments; to build new and different ways of reaching out to new and present customers that amaze you with their results. This book provides the strategies you need to know and rely on; the samples that can speed your preparation of winning advertising and serve as essential shortcuts in a busy, multitasking business life; and the tools that belong right at your desk, at your right hand, to use to uncover and unleash your business’s true attractant powers.

Incidentally, be sure to take advantage of the extensions of this book. The printed book you hold in your hands is actually one of several component parts of an entire advertising transformation system Bill has assembled for you. There is a free CD with all the samples and exhibits shown to you in this book, in full color and complete detail; a special Web site; a free gift collection of advertising, marketing, and business resources including a trial subscription to the No B.S. Marketing Letter and three Webinars; and referrals throughout the book to experts, specialists, and vendors who support implementation of all the outrageous advertising shown here.

Since I started with a confession, I’ll end with one. I am disappointed with and dislike this book. I am disappointed Bill has packed it so full and given away so much for such a small, token price, and I unsuccessfully argued for stripping it back when I reviewed the manuscript. As is, this should be a $1,000 or $2,000 info-product sold as a kit of resources, not a book sold for the price of a Starbucks coffee and scone. I worry about it spoiling people. Or being taken for granted. Also, as an author, I admit to some unhappiness at having the bar raised. He has made the job tougher for the rest of us by so badly overdoing it here. Your gain, our headache.