How to make a beer ad that's "not awful"
Similar to how I taught myself beer brewing, I decided to teach myself marketing. Educating myself had always been my solution to any problem, so why should this part of running a business be any different? Being a curious and analytical person, I had to read and understand every marketing article I found. The problem was the flow of articles never
... See moreBilly Broas • Simple Marketing For Smart People: The One Question You Need to Win Customers without Gimmicks, Hype, or Hard Selling
A great story about marketing and advertising:
About 80 years ago ad man Claude Hopkins had a major problem.
Here it is:
It was Hopkins' job to create advertising to sell Schlitz beer.
Schlitz, an unremarkable beer with nothing to recommend it over any other brew was ranked a miserable 15th in sales in the U.S. beer market.
Claude approached this projec
... See moreLike many writers before me, I tend to lean on vague hand-waving when the need to define taste, or rather, good taste, arises. A common trope is to use the phrase US Supreme Court justice Stewart famously gave to describe obscenity, a similarly hard-to-describe bedfellow of taste, in 1964: “I know it when I see it.” In design, good taste can be kno... See more
Elizabeth Goodspeed on the Importance of Taste – And How to Acquire It
That kind of thinking changed the face of advertising forever.