Reality in Advertising

Rarely has a book about advertising created such a commotion
as this brilliant account of the principles of successful
advertising. Published in 1961, Reality in Advertising was
listed for weeks on the general best-seller lists, and is today
acknowledged to be advertising's greatest classic. It has
been translated into twelve languages-French, Japanese,
Spanish, Dutch, German, Italian, Portuguese, Danish, Swedish,
Norwegian, Finnish, Hebrew-and has been published in
twenty-one separate editions in fifteen countries. Leading
business executives, and the advertising cognoscenti, hail it
as "the best book for professionals that has ever come out of
Madison Avenue." (For typical comments see back of jacket.)
Rosser Reeves says: "The book attempts to formulate
certain theories of advertising, many quite new, and all
based on 30 years of intensive research." These theories,
whose value has been proved in the marketplace, all revolve
around the central concept that success in selling a product
is the key criterion of advertising.
In the course of explaining his own hard-headed approach,
Mr. Reeves shows why the ad campaigns for many products
are just so much money poured down the drain. He has some
devastating things to say about advertising's misguided men:
the "aesthetes" and the "puffers" who put art and technique
ahead of the client's sales; and he punctures many of the
misguided philosophies which lower the efficiency of advertising,
rather than raising it.
But even more important is the thoroughness and clarity
with which he explains many of the mysteries of how to
write advertising that produces these sales.
Here, in short, is a concise, forcefully written guide that
has been called "a 'Rosetta Stone' for the advertising business"-
an essential book for anyone who works in advertising,
or uses advertising extensively.
It is today required reading in hundreds of great corporations
and many of the world's leading business schools.