I promised you some excerpts from my new book MOST ADS SUCK (But Yours Won’t). Like all good books, the best place to start is the beginning. Here is the Foreword …

Foreword

Who will use this book? Anyone who writes content to persuade including web content, ad copy, magazine articles, emails and newsletters, and even speeches. If you write to persuade, you’ll find this book relevant and useful. If you write to connect, you’ll find this book relevant and useful. If you write to spark change, you’ll find this book relevant and useful.

The character who leads you through this book is you. You’re like me in your curiosity and desire to learn—that’s why you’re reading this book in the first place. You lead yourself through the first eight chapters discovering new ideas and revelations as you go. I will take over in Chapter 9 to show you by example how the principles you learn in this book apply to all different types of businesses, including yours.

You will still need to bring a few tools to the table to make this book work best for you. Most importantly, you have to know your Core Values. For the purpose of this book, you will have the values of Freedom, Curiosity, Diligence, and Education. You will use your own Curiosity to explore the concepts of how to make your advertising more effective. You will use Diligence to do the research you need to give yourself the tools (Education) to write your own content in your own words. That will give you the Freedom to succeed in your business without being led blindly down fruitless paths to more boring, useless, ineffective advertising. My own Core Values are Having Fun, Helping Others, Education, and Nostalgia. See if you can spot them throughout this book.

I first presented this information at the Jackson Retail Success Academy™ back in 2011. Fourteen frying pans later, it is an audience favorite because the applications are endless. You will find yourself using the principles in this book for far more than advertising. You’ll see the influence of this book in all of your writings, presentations, sales calls, and trainings. In fact, I have a ten-minute TED-style talk centered around how Chapter 4 applies to all levels of communication. (I’m still waiting on a true TED or TEDx event to call.)

I want you to share this book. I expect you to dog-ear some pages, underline some passages, write your own notes in the margins. I also expect you to pass this book along to your friends in a similar position as you (or preferably, buy them a copy of their own). I expect you to take exceptions to different principles based on your own experiences. That’s why I call them principles instead of rules. (And also because you’re the kind of person who hates the word “rules” and would immediately try to find ways to break them.)

I especially expect or even encourage you to find fault with many of the sample ads in the back of the book. That’s okay. As Roy H. Williams taught me many years ago, an advertisement is like a magnet. Its ability to attract is in exact proportion to its ability to repel. If you feel any emotion at all towards the ad samples, I will have done my job. If you really don’t like them, I challenge you to write better ones. Send them to me. I would love to read them.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS You can pre-order a copy of this book by supporting my Indiegogo.com Campaign. (The more pre-orders and support I get, the faster this book gets into your hands.) Stay tuned for Chapter 1 tomorrow …