The Brains Behind Great Ad Campaigns: Creative Collaboration between Copywriters and Art Directors

by Margo Berman, Robyn Blakeman

Overview

Catch an inside look at the advertising creative process. Discover how teams collaborate at major agencies to create unforgettable campaigns like the Budweiser 'Clydesdale and Dalmatian' spots, the 'PEDIGREE' Adoption Drive' program, or the breakthrough UPS 'Whiteboard' campaign.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781461644125
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	07/16/2009
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	8 MB

About the Author

Margo Berman is professor of advertising at Florida International University and author of Street-Smart Advertising: How to Win the Battle of the Buzz. She specializes in creative courses including Creative Strategies, Creative Concepts, and Trends in Graphics and Design. Robyn Blakeman is assistant professor of advertising design at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. She is the author of The Bare Bones of Advertising Print Design, Integrated Marketing Communication: Creative Strategy from Idea to Implementation, and The Bare Bones Introduction to Integrated Marketing Communication.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 The Brains behind the Campaign: The Strategy and the Brief
2 Brainstorming: The Marriage of Visual and Verbal to the Strategy
3 Brainstorming: Techniques to Get to the Big Idea
4 How Campaigns Tell the Brand's Story
5 How Copywriters Approach Strategy Verbally
6 How Designers Approach Strategy Visually
7 Where Campaigns and Brands Go off Course
8 On-Strategy Campaigns That Spin Out
9 New Strategies for Old and New Media
10 Nuts and Bolts of Great Presentations

What People are Saying About This

Tim Hendrick

'A Perfect Marriage:' An invigorating and outstanding book that marries the business side of advertising with the creative development side. It defines the creative process for advertising students, that should be a must-read for all whether on the management or creative track. Through contemporary examples, many well known, the substantiation and melding of the left and right brain detail the results of such collaborations. The book really brings it all together, true integration.

Pippa Seichrist

This book gives you a box seat view of the collaborative process needed to create outstanding campaigns including how-tos from some of the industry's superstars. And you'll see it also takes a village to raise an ad.

Edward de Bono

This is a remarkably comprehensive account of how advertising ideas, strategies, and campaigns come about.

Craig Davis

I think this is a much needed book for an Advertising Campaign Capstone class. It provides tangible, insightful, and relevant advice, while numerous examples bring all the material together.

Janas Sinclair

Packed with quotes from leading creatives, The Brains Behind Great Ad Campaigns is an engaging window on the creative process and the current role of research, strategy, and media specialists in big idea generation. The authors provide the real-world insight students need, and for both novices and those familiar with the ad industry, illustrate how agencies are adapting to today’s media environment.

Editorial Reviews

In this didactic look at advertising, including plenty of fun examples from the American ad landscape but little in the way of snappy advice or sloganeering, academics Berman and Blakeman compile a textbook-ready step-by-step guide to the advertising process. Taking readers through the nuts and bolts of ad creation, the authors are unafraid to start with the basics: the chapter called "How Designers Approach Strategy Visually" explains that "layout style, or how elements are featured or placed in the design, determines what your concept will say about itself." As an explication of advertising mechanics, from brainstorming to copywriting to strategizing and media usage, Berman and Blakeman have put together a thorough, if dry, primer that will familiarize would-be ad professionals with the discipline's processes and principles; anyone hoping for a deeper look at the "creative" side of "creative collaboration" will probably do better with a volume penned by experienced industry insiders.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Publishers Weekly

Margo Berman and Robyn Blakeman's book, The Brains Behind Great Ad Campaigns, is a much-needed one. It's not a guide to developing concepts. It's not a book about copywriting or visual communication. It's not a recipe for success. Nor is it a book about strategy, although all these topics are covered. It's more about the underlying process that results in a great advertising campaign idea. What makes this book special and so helpful for a campaign class is that it covers the right topics, in the right amount, in the right sequence and with crystal-clear examples....The Brains Behind Great Ad Campaigns joins a host of other notable advertising books. What it does better than other is help students understand what it takes to develop better ideas and it sets the stage for other advertising creative how-to books. It is well written and well organized. It is an ideal book for an upper-level undergraduate advertising campaign or capstone course. It would also be relevant for upper-level journalism studies in public relations, Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC), strategic communication or marketing communications.

Journalism Studies

This is a remarkably comprehensive account of how advertising ideas, strategies, and campaigns come about.

Edward de Bono

This book gives you a box seat view of the collaborative process needed to create outstanding campaigns including how-tos from some of the industry's superstars. And you'll see it also takes a village to raise an ad.

Pippa Seichrist

Packed with quotes from leading creatives, The Brains Behind Great Ad Campaigns is an engaging window on the creative process and the current role of research, strategy, and media specialists in big idea generation. The authors provide the real-world insight students need, and for both novices and those familiar with the ad industry, illustrate how agencies are adapting to today’s media environment.

Janas Sinclair

I think this is a much needed book for an Advertising Campaign Capstone class. It provides tangible, insightful, and relevant advice, while numerous examples bring all the material together.

Craig Davis

'A Perfect Marriage:' An invigorating and outstanding book that marries the business side of advertising with the creative development side. It defines the creative process for advertising students, that should be a must-read for all whether on the management or creative track. Through contemporary examples, many well known, the substantiation and melding of the left and right brain detail the results of such collaborations. The book really brings it all together, true integration.

Tim Hendrick