The Want Makers - Hardcover

This study of modern advertising worldwide is as contentious as it is thorough. British journalist Clark describes in exhaustive detail an industry that targets as captive customers children, who spend more time watching TV than in school, and can zero in on consumer "grazers" 18-30 years old, who eat lightly and often and buy more of everything than anyone else. He shows us tobacco and liquor advertisers who subtly evade regulation, giant pharmaceutical companies with identical therapies that push their own brand names on doctors through gifts, entertainment and a barrage of trade ads, and political TV spots that overwhelm democracy in national elections. Many ads don't merely bend the truth, charges the author--"they are outright lies." Clark attempts to present a balanced picture of the industry, yet he suggests that things may have gone a bit too far when the referee in a sponsored TV sports event calls fouls repeatedly so commercials "can be fit in." 20,000 first printing.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Clark, a former investigative reporter for the London Observer and Manchester Guardian , seems bent on producing an expose even if the industry he's spotlighting--the advertising business in the United States and United Kingdom--doesn't, as a whole, merit one. He has thoroughly mined the trade press for provocative information on the subject, and his interviews with professionals in the industry have yielded some pithy stories. But many of Clark's anecdotes often seem sensationalized, and he too regularly uses 20-30-year-old examples and research to make his point. In the end, the work loses focus as Clark drones on about the attempt of advertisers to persuade. Of course they do. Why else advertise? This book best serves a general audience that appreciates a polemical approach.
- Gene R. Laczniak, Marquette Univ., Milwaukee
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.