I started the persuasion and marketing book reviews on PersuasionReadingList.com (now Goldmine.Marketing) in 2016. The first was My Life in Advertising by Claude C. Hopkins, a classic written in 1927.
Since then, I’ve summarized my favorite lessons from dozens of books — and I have dozens of other marketing, copywriting, and persuasion books on my shelf that I’ve read but not written about.
It’s been fun and educational on my end — and I hope on your end too!
As I continue along my journey, learning about the forces that influence us and how we, in turn, can influence the world around us, I was bound to find my way back to advertising.
I first heard of Robert Updegraff’s 1916 book Obvious Adams on Ben Settle’s podcast. (Ben is a copywriter and the inspiration behind my once daily, now occasional, emails to my favorite readers).
Advertising great David Ogilvy (yes that Ogilvy) encouraged his staff to read Obvious Adams once per year!
Ogilvy-approved? I picked up a copy for myself — cheap!
It was a small book. (It still is small, I suppose.)
Updegraff tells the story of Oliver B. Adams, a young man in the advertising business who thinks of the obvious course of action — and takes it.
Seems… obvious, doesn’t it?
To everyone around him, yes his solutions seem obvious — yet no one is quite able to see as clearly as Oliver.
Everyone else, it turns out, is
“doing too much advertising and not enough selling!”
Seeing as how the copyright has run out on this little book from 1916…
…Knowing that repetition helps us to learn and absorb ideas…
…Knowing that I enjoy rocking out in the car (to audio books and copywriting podcasts)…
…Knowing that Obvious Adams is over 100 years old, yet contains secrets that Ogilvy was willing to share…
It seemed obvious to me that I might record the book for repeated listening!
(My friend Ryan laughed at me when I told him this brilliant idea!)
(And now that I think about it… this might have been Ben Settle’s brilliant idea!)
(But it is rather obvious!)
And to share it with you, I’ve added it to my Persuasion Play Podcast.
Find this episode here on YouTube, or listen to it below. And as Ogilvy suggested… listen more than once.
At least, that’s my plan. Enjoy!