Let’s get into the groove of my new Tuesday Marketing Book Club series with a reference from the end of the 1960’s. The earthy, meaty, and often hilarious From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor: Front-Line Dispatches from the Advertising War
by Jerry Della Femina.
It is full of gems and anecdotes and streetwise advertising advice. I think it is typical of that era of Manhattan advertising (of all the books I have read so far, this one actually gives the best insight of that period). And yet most of will resonate for today’s marketer or agency man. And you’ll get your fair share of tips you can apply to your campaigns – research, creativity, media buy…
If just to give you a preview before your go and buy it, a few extracts from one of the best parts of the book: his description of the beer market in Chapter 7, The Jolly Green Giant and Other Stories. It actually goes on for a few pages taking examples of best and worst campaigns. I laugh everytime I read it.
Twenty percent of the people in this country who buy beer drink about 80 percent of all beer consumed. I have an image in my mind of your typical beer drinker: the man never has a shirt on. He’s always in his undershirt (…). I may be wrong there, but I could swear that your typical beer drinker is proud of his beer belly.
These guys start drinking at nine o’clock in the morning – and they have their more than one by 9:05 a.m. And they drink and they drink and drink and drink, and this is the beer market.
The only thing you have to worry about in selling beer is to give these guys enough time to waste. I mean, don’t give these guys anything to do in which they have to use their hands, other than bowling. Bowling is O.K. because all they have to do is get up every seven minutes or so and roll a ball and then sit down (…) and start drinking beer again.
Just find enough leisure time for the beer drinkers, that’s your only worry. Leisure time, in a beer drinker’s mind, means all they have to do is reach for a glass or for a bottle. Maybe they’ll have to get up from the television set and go to the refrigerator, but that’s it.
Hope it gave you a good primer as to what to expect if you haven’t read it before.
You can purchase this book from Amazon: From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor: Front-Line Dispatches from the Advertising War
