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“WHAT STICKS” CHALLENGES DECADES OLD THINKING OF ADVERTISING

New Book Offers Landmark Research on $1 Billion in Ad Spending

Chicago, Illinois (AUGUST 1^st 2006) - There’s a famous quote about advertising, attributed decades ago to retail magnate John Wanamaker: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half.” Today the stakes are much higher, with companies worldwide spending an estimated $450 billion annually to promote their products without having any idea whether their messages are reaching or affecting consumers.

An estimated $112 billion – fully one-third of total U.S. advertising spending – is wasted, according to marketing thought leaders
Rex Briggs and Greg Stuart. “Because marketing is often the single largest line item within a company’s budget, these wasted dollars can easily mean the difference between beating the Street’s expectations and failing miserably, and between bottom-line profit and loss,” says Briggs.

In What Sticks (Kaplan Publishing, September 2006, $25.00, hardcover) Briggs and Stuart uncover bold new insights from the single-largest global marketing research project ever undertaken. They look at over 30 Fortune 200 companies, including: Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, Kraft, McDonalds, Unilever, Ford and others and dissect the key factors that determine advertising success, revealing a process to measure and improve performance along with an organizational framework for managing marketing.

This is a comprehensive and solutions-oriented book that outlines how any marketer, at any level, can guarantee their advertising succeeds. Readers will learn:

	Why 47% of the advertising campaigns studied didn’t work and what you can do to guarantee yours does
	How to spend the same advertising budget but get better results – the campaigns studied on average gained +20% (And one campaign actually gained nearly +2000%.)
	How to get your CFO and CEO to eagerly increase your marketing & advertising budget
	What many marketers don’t get about how marketing & advertising REALLY works
	Forecast next year’s advertising budget (hint: It’s not by using last year’s spending!)
	How to immediately fix your advertising by applying these principles and real nuggets of wisdom

What Sticks challenges the old ways of thinking, providing practical, hands-on solutions for marketers wishing to confront and eliminate wasted advertising dollars like never before, while increasing company profits. It also examines the business processes at work in marketing departments and ad agencies, identifying the practices that improve results and practices that stymie effectiveness.

About the Authors

Rex Briggs is the founder of Marketing Evolution, the leading marketing effectiveness research and consulting firm with global clients in more than 20 countries. Briggs began his career at the market research firm Yankelovich Partners, and also served in senior positions at some of the nation’s top-flight organizations, such as the WPP Group. He has been named by AdWeek as one of the “Best and Brightest” in media and technology and has won a range of awards in CRM, Branding, Direct Marketing, Internet Marketing and advertising measurement research.

Greg Stuart is the CEO and President of the New York based Interactive Advertising Bureau, the leading global association representing Google, MSN, NYTimes.com, Yahoo! and over 300 other companies. He has led the U.S. Internet Advertising industry from $6 billion to $16 billion in the past four years. A 20-year veteran of the advertising industry, Stuart he has worked with leading marketers, advertising agencies and new media businesses in New York City and around the world.

Revitalize your advertising and join the new marketing revolution at www.whatsticks.NET.

What Stick: Why Most Advertising Fails and How to Guarantee Yours Succeeds ($25.00, 304 pages, hardcover, ISBN: 1-4195-8433-2) is available at neighborhood and online booksellers or by calling 800-245-BOOK. Kaplan Publishing is one of the nation’s leading education, career and business publishers. Kaplan Publishing, with offices in New York and Chicago, produces more than 150 books a year on test preparation, admissions, academic and professional development, general business, management, sales, marketing, real estate, finance and investing. Kaplan Publishing is a unit of Kaplan, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of The Washington Post Company (NYSE: WPO). For more information, please visit www.kaplanpublishing.com.

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