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Three cheers for sales promotion

Three cheers for sales promotion

WHAT’S THE oldest profession in the world? Beyond Redemption unequivocally claims that it is sales promotion – Adam would never have eaten the apple without the offer of ‘Free knowledge’. And so from the Garden of Eden to the online pastures of the Amazon marketplace we are taken on ‘a journey’ that not even Tony Blair could have conjured up in his recent tome.

Colin Lloyd and Ken Spedding (two highly successful doyennes of the promotions industry) cover all the ups and downs of an industry that has fought to protect its position as the most powerful form of marketing content against the misconceptions expressed by the newer forms of marketing disciplines. Such disciplines would have us follow the teachings of Marshall Mcluhan that the ‘media is the message’. It is made clear that the well-crafted and creative promotional offers drive increased sales, not the media.

The book covers the history of the industry with emphasis on the past 50 years. It highlights successes such as Green Shield Stamps and the disasters, of which the Hoover Free Flights Offer gets top billing. However, to make it more than a textbook, Beyond Redemption portrays a time when the art of creating a great idea was more important than the planning sciences that drive today’s process-driven briefs. It regales with tales of the people, that it calls the History Makers, who developed the industry. The promotional champions inspired great things to happen before the people in this industry were overshadowed by big corporations.

The subtitle for the book is “The sex, drugs and rock and roll of marketing” but there is little overt reference to any of these vices in the book.

However, its launch coincides with the publishing of new research that shows that people’s physical reactions to viewing great promotions match those reactions when viewing porn – so, reader beware of some hard-core images.

The informative examples of how promotions have changed our lives, linked to stories of how some campaigns were put together, makes for a gripping read in places. And it is all the more gripping with the inclusion of confessional anecdotes about when it all went horribly wrong. This may suggest that the pioneers of the 20th-century promotions industry lived close to the edge – maybe this is why it was titled Beyond Redemption. I couldn’t possibly comment.

Beyond Redemption, Colin Lloyd and Ken Spedding, Sales Promotion Publishing (2010), £15


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