The Anatomy of Humbug

This book is about “How the Ad Industry Thinks about its Past”. The author Paul Feldwick distinguishes three kinds of stories that the ad industry tells about its own past:

• The Enlightment narrative
• The Golden Age narrative
• The Year Zero narrative

Feldwicks story is about the advertising men who have influenced advertising thinking and practice in the past century and whose legacy still largely constructs the advertising culture of today. He not only believes that we have to understand how our industry has changed, but also that we have to be prepared to study both the theory and the practice that have been built up over the last hundred and fifty years. We have to realize that our processes, our language, our research techniques turn out to be handed to us from the past. This book is about these popular mental models that for the most part were created by people who worked in the business.

Initially he gives a review on the traditional Salesmanship era when advertising was mostly about rational persuasion, then he moves to the Seduction era, when ideas about advertising located its effect more in the power of images, symbols, emotions and the subconscious mind. In the final part of his book Feldwick stresses the fact that there are many more ways of thinking about advertising that could give us a greater scope in what we do. Advertising professionals should not limit themselves to what happens to be fashionable. All models, theories, belief systems are available as resources for all time. We can use any medium and any approach: we are free to think differently.