What’s a more powerful offer, “50% off” or “Buy One Get One Free”. Drew Whitman will tell you. No, this is not a book about social media, but about the psychology behind advertising. Whitman then takes that information and shows you you can apply it to direct mail, internet ads, magazine ads and more.
Many people will pick up this book, especially those not in the industry and it will reconfirm everything they hate about advertising. The reason being that Whitman has analyzed study upon study to find out just how the human mind works and how to manipulate it to increase sales. While this doesn’t seem like the most heroic feat, that is what advertising strives to accomplish. For instance Whitman has compiled a list of the seven types of photographs that get the best response rate. In order these are: children & babies, mothers & babies, groups of adults, animals, sports scenes, celebrities and food. Whitman then goes on to describe why this is the case, relating each back to a list similar to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Whitman does this over and over with font type, short vs. long copy, unique selling proposition, selling to emotion and the best ways to start a headline as examples. He also breaks up the book with quotes by some of the greats such as Claude Hopkins, Rosser Reeves and David Ogilvy.
While you will learn nothing about social networking, tagging or blogging in this book, you may take away invaluable insights into the minds of your consumers.
Posted by hobokin 
