Reality in Advertising

A legendary advertising man distills thirty years of experience in this candid and incisive book, now considered to be advertising's greatest classic. Rosser Reeves was the Chairman of the Ted Bates Advertising Agency and probably New York's most influential and famous advertising figure during the height of the Mad Men era of the 1950's and 60's. In this book, he unveils the Unique Selling Proposition--U.S.P.-- the most incisive and enduring advertising principle of all times. Reeves and his agency are the ones who gave us household name taglines like M&M's "Melts in your mouth, not in your hand," "Rolaids spells Relief" and dozens of others.

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.

From the original edition in 1961-- Rosser Reeves, chairman of the board of Ted Bates & Company, is a man with rather dazzling reserves of energy. His main preoccupation, of course, is one of the fastest-growing advertising agencies in America. However, in addition, he is a licensed pilot, a skilled yachtsman, a collector of modern art, a Civil War buff, a musician, and a writer of short stories; from time to time he immerses himself in chess, and as a non-player, he was captain of the last American chess team sent to Moscow. Born in Danville, Virginia, Mr. Reeves studied at the University of Virginia, and began his career as a reporter for the Richmond Times-Dispatch. But he soon gave up journalism in favor of advertising, coming to New York in 1934 and working for various agencies as a copywriter before joining Ted Bates and Company in 1940. He was vice-president and copy chief of the agency for six years, and became chairman of the board in 1955. Reality in Advertising is his first book.