Andrew has posted a list of Classic Advertising Books as compiled by Jerry Della Famina in The Wall Street Journal. Here’s the list –

The 100 Greatest Advertisements 1852-1958 by Julius Lewis Watkins, 1959

Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy, 1963

Bill Bernbach’s Book by Bob Levenson, 1987

A Technique for Producing Ideas by James Webb Young, 1940

Reality in Advertising by Rosser Reeves (inventor of the USP), 1961

Now, I must have read virtually hundreds of Books on Advertising and Marketing but Haven’t come across any of these books. Ouch! Time to start reading more. :p

Here’s My list of Classics (or the stuff you must absolutely read before you spend a penny on marketing) :

1. Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins. This classic book is now in Public Domain and available free (just google for an electronic version and print it out) and I can tell you that this is THE BEST BOOK about advertising that you’d ever read.

2. How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling by Frank Bettger. I can safely say that this one book really changed my complete mindset and super-charged the way I do Marketing.

3. Influence : The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini. I must have read this book 8 times and every time I read it, I learn something new about human psychology that I can directly use in my marketing campaigns.

4. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. Ok it’s not about marketing but each and every principle he talks about in this book is directly applicable to every marketing campaign.

In the 12 years that I’ve been involved in marketing industry, I have come to realize one thing —Most people ignore that Marketing is all about Psychology. What are we doing while promoting? We are trying to influence our target audience’s minds. That is why whenever someone asks me to recommend them some marketing courses or books I always include materials that covers applied psychology (not those dry and crap textbook stuff but practical stuff).

And that’s is something I’d like to stress in here too—Your understanding of marketing will never be complete without understanding the working of human mind.

On thing I must stress — just reading books is not enough. You have to get your feet wet if you want to actually learn something. You have to actually make mistakes to make a good campaign.

Another thing, learn how to sell directly! No kidding but going out and giving a single pitch to a client would teach you a lot more than you would learn by reading 10 books.

All the best!