Stephen King was one of the two founding fathers of the ‘Account Planning’ discipline. On his retirement from J. Walter Thompson (JWT), the advertising agency published a collection of Stephen King’s papers that were written between 1967-1985. A Masterclass in Brand Planning is comprised of 20 of these essays. I’ll summarise five concepts from the book here for those who haven’t read it.

George Lois is a member of the Art Directors Hall of Fame, the Advertising Hall of Fame and the Copywriters Hall of Fame. His book, Damn Good Advice is full of lessons learnt from a career as one of world’s most famous ad executives. This summary highlights five of my favourites.

In The Anatomy of Humbug, Paul Feldwick outlines six theories of how advertising works: Salesmanship, seduction, salience, social connection, spin, showbiz. I’ll summarise them all below.

In their book The Long and the Short of It, Les Binet and Peter Field analyse the IPA’s Databank of 996 campaigns that were entered into the IPA Effectiveness Awards between 1980 and 2010. Here’s 8 lessons from the study for those who haven’t yet read the book.

In his book Delusions of Brandeur, Ryan Wallman takes a satirical swipe at the nonsense that exists within our industry. The book is beautifully designed by …Gasp! and published by …Gasp! Books. Here’s my 5 favourite spreads.

In Seducing the Subconscious Robert Heath makes a counterintuitive claim: The less attention an ad receives the more powerful its affect. The book supports the theory with research on attention, processing, filtering, learning and memory. This post summarises the research as well as Heath’s provocative conclusion.

In “It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want To Be” the late Paul Arden, Creative Director at Saatchi and Saatchi, offers up some of the lessons he learnt during a lifetime in advertising. Here’s 10.

James Webb Young believed that the production of ideas was as definite as the production of Fords. In 1942, he published his five-step process in the book A Technique For Producing Ideas. I’ll summarise it here for those who haven’t read it.

During a recent re-read of Truth, Lies and Advertising I distilled Jon Steel’s ten rules for qualitative research.

So, with a little creative license, I thought I’d share my notes in case others might find them useful.