Helene Kwong: Renaissance Woman

I mentioned about Adland in a previous post. I finished reading this book today and was a little disappointed with the final few chapters. Those chapters felt a little rushed and it seemed to me that Mark Tungate was trying to squeeze as much information in as few words as possible. There wasn’t enough background and history for the Japanese company, Dentsu, or for the Latin American/Hispanic companies. Maybe there really wasn’t that much information to extract about those companies, but the book was really imbalanced with European companies. I guess it is true that a lot of the best advertising comes from Great Britain, or France, or the US, but it would have been nice to have a more “global feel” to the book. I also felt a little disappointed that there wasn’t enough information at all about the Thai advertising agencies–Tungate really could have expanded upon that section a lot more.

But I can’t complain really–the book provided me some insight into the world that I am interested in entering. It gave me more references to look up, more books to read. At least now I realize what I had been missing in my schooling for the past few months–history! I still don’t understand why my school never taught us any history of advertising or any of the marketing sectors for that matter.

Been reading this book for the past few weeks–I checked it out from the SF Public Library at the beginning of January and was planning on renewing it, but seems somebody else has already put the book on hold. So last night, today, tomorrow, and early Saturday morning I am going to be speed reading through the book in order to finish it. I think I have some sort of reading problem in recent years–maybe some mild form of ADD. I read passages, and sometimes my mind blanks out while reading and then I have to re-read the passage several more times until I can fully comprehend the material. Strange.

Anyway, reading this book has made me realize that I really did not know much about the world of advertising before. I feel like some of this history of advertising should have been taught to me in school, but I guess professors assumed we students would pick stuff up by ourselves. It’s too bad that my college did not have a specific advertising program, at least not when I was in school–it probably would have helped me more if I had more of focus in subject than just skimming across the top of the very broad topic of marketing.