Book Review: The End of Advertising as We Know It by Sergio Zyman with Armin Brott Paul Viverette JOMC 170, Joe Bob Hester Summer Session II, July 18, 2006 Honor Code:________________________________About the author: Sergio Zyman has great respect for the field of advertising and has spent many years studying and teaching the aspects of advertising that can make or break companies that undergo any sort of advertising as we know it, or soon will come to see. Zyman has worked in the field of advertising for over thirty years, for some of the nations, and worlds, most successful advertising companies and products. On his resume he includes a MBA from Harvard and held one of his first jobs with Proctor & Gamble in Mexico. There Sergio was part of the advertising team that marketed products such as Ariel Detergent, which later became the top selling detergent, even outselling Tide, as the worldwide leader. Later, Zyman spent time with McCann Erickson in charge of the Coca-Cola account, and later formed his own agency, Zyman Marketing Group. To his credibility, he has added working with top executives in Fortune 500 companies, some of the nation’s leading marketers and researchers, and has traveled all over the world including Mexico, Japan, England and others. Zyman’s first book, entitled The End of Marketing as We Know It, is the publication that he blames for his success and also for the initiation of his own agency in 2001. Since then, he has also written another book entitled Building Bandwidth, and most recently the book which is being reviewed entitled The End of Advertising As We Know It. In 2001, Sergio Zyman was named by Time Magazine as one of the three best pitchmen of the 20th century, which also included in its ranks two other very influential men by the names of David Ogilvy and Lester Wunderman. All in all, Sergio Zyman is highly respected and accredited in the field of marketing, and attributes all his success to the revelation that he was a man who “got it” early and by learning firsthand.Abstract: The End of Advertising As We Know It, was written for the purpose of showing advertisers in any sector where and why advertisers go wrong and the suggested steps that the reader should take to keep from going down the wrong path. It includes personal experience, business stories of failure and success, and suggestions that one should take to ensure that advertising is handled in the proper way, a way that will sell product. Summed up in his own words, the book was written because Zyman “…decided to focus on the one segment of marketing where the most mistakes are made and where the most money is spent—and wasted. The hands down winner…advertising”(Zyman 5). The book begins by explaining how advertising is so much more than the 30-second commercial spots that you see on TV, and continues to explain why it’s not working. It also tackles, in Chapter 2, one of the oldest myths in advertising: that if people know who you are, they will buy your product. Chapter 3 explains Zyman’s philosophy that the retention of old customers is much more profitable that trying to gain new ones. Zyman continues in Chapter 4 to discuss using icons and celebrity endorsers to increase profits, provides examples of companies that have been success and failures, and also provides advice to find the right personality to represent your product or service. In Chapter 5, the author continues to use stories of success and failures to show the reader how packaging can entail so many different things and not just the shape and color of the container that the actual product comes in, and describes the other aspects. Chapter 6 tries to describe the real intentions of and misconceptions of sponsorship programs and teaches the reader how to manage results for the best. Sergio advances in Chapter 7 to discuss publicity, its misconceptions, benefits, and exactly what to do if crisis happens.Customers are the main focus of Chapter 8 and Zyman explains how they are to be handled, including steps in creating customer satisfaction and retention. Chapter 9 is devoted to giving two real world examples, namely Kmart and Taco Bell, of companies that ignored and blew every advertising rule that Zyman wishes to communicate in his book, and consequently suffered great losses. Finally, the book ends with Chapter 10, where Sergio encourages us not to miss any opportunities by adopting a different way of looking at advertising. The overall point of Sergio Zyman’s, The End of Advertising As We Know It, is to never forget that “everything communicates” and to provide the reader with the knowledge, tools, and direction to create workable advertising strategies and how to translate them into real-time business success. Summary: Some of the major points in this book are repeated in several different chapters and serve only to remind the reader of the crucial importance of remembering certain points. Throughout the book, Sergio Zyman will stress the importance of remembering that everything is advertising, everything communicates, and that the overall importance and job of advertising is “selling more stuff to more people more often for more money” (Zyman 14). Chapter 1 goes over and refutes one of advertising’s major misconceptions that advertising itself is the only ingredient in increasing sales. Zyman’s discusses several cases where “traditional advertisement” that is purely entertainment may increase awareness of the product, but may not translate into increased sales. Zyman wants tocommunicate that advertisement is more than just those 30-second slots that are seen on TV, and how everything that your company does is part of the advertising that you are offering. Zyman says that lots of companies are getting ripped of by ad agencies that are stuck solely on creating entertaining advertisement, some that do nothing at all to communicate what the product or service has to offer to the consumer. He explains that it is important to communicate very clearly the product not only to your customers, but also to your employees who sell and deliver the product. Zyman says in the chapter that “awareness is irrelevant, so over communicate” (Zyman 24). He stresses that you can’t assume that your employees or consumers “just get it” when it comes to your product. Zyman continues to explain how the traditional rules