Bang!

Getting Your Message Heard in a Noisy World

By: Linda Kaplan Thayer, Robin Koval

Narrated by: Deborah Marlowe

Length: 7 hrs and 5 mins

Publisher's summary

The founders of one of today's hottest, most innovative advertising agencies explain how to ignite the kind of marketing explosions that will capture customers' attention.

Linda Kaplan Thaler, the CEO and Chief Creative Officer of the Kaplan Thaler Group, is the brains behind a host of memorable and highly successful ads, from the irresistibly sentimental "Kodak moment" campaign to Herbal Essences' "totally organic experience" to, most recently, the irrepressible AFLAC duck.

In Bang!, Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval of the Kaplan Thaler Group, currently ranked as the fastest-growing ad agency in the country, offer the kind of out-of-the-box thinking and proven strategies that marketers anywhere can use to create loud, clear, attention-grabbing messages about their products and services.

Presenting an arsenal of "big bang" ideas, the authors discuss how to create a memorable publicity hook and how to design attention-grabbing packaging that taps into consumers' innermost desires. They interweave entertaining accounts of their successes and failures, as well as those of other companies to suggest specific ways to establish an atmosphere conducive to innovative breakthroughs - why having "enough" time to work on a project can be a disadvantage, and why having a small staff in a cramped space is often the best way to come up with big ideas.

Full of colorful anecdotes and inspiring accounts of campaigns that have catapulted revenues and increased market shares, Bang! shows how to create a marketing campaign that rises above the banal barrage of commercials to create a genuine marketing explosion.

©2003 Linda Kaplan Thayer and Robin Koval (P)2003 Random House, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Although the author's advice is targeted primarily toward businesses and other publicists, the glitzy anecdotal writing is witty and informative enough to appeal to those interested in advertising and popular culture." (Publishers Weekly)
"If Al Gore had had this book in 2000, George W. Bush wouldn't be sitting in the White House." (James Carville, author and Democratic strategist)
"Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval 'get it' from every angle. This [audio] book is full of extraordinary insight on effective message delivery." (Gordon Bethune, Chairman and CEO, Continental Airlines)

pretty good, I enjoyed it

Definitely a great book and I got some good info outta it. She makes a good effort to be funny and entertaining. Though it's very apparently her target for this book is the fairer sex. Many times I rolled my eyes.

Bang! makes an impact

This was an interesting look at marketing ideas. Although sometimes tough to distinguish the author's success from her retelling stories of friends success, this book had some great insight.

Bust!! Wasted my money on Bang!!

As an engineer turned entrepreneur, I thought this audio book would be of great value to me. I was wrong.
While this agency has great creative, the book is light on content, with asides that are consistently distracting and of little or no value. Platitudes like "Creative people need special working environments" or "flat structures are better for small teams" seem to make up the bulk of the management advice.
Finally, as a small businessperson, hearing about how "we won a 15 M dollar contract for advertising" and not "we generated 50 M dollars worth of new business" through campaign x reminded me why a typical marketing exec will be late on our list of hires.
Avoid this book, and watch an AFLAC commercial instead--the duck can communicate more about marketing than this book.

What a disappointment!

After seeing a rating of 4.3 stars on Audible.com, I happily downloaded the book expecting a treat. What a disappointement! I've been an Audible subscriber for some time now, and this has been the first book I haven't finished. I got about one quarter of the way through and deleted it.

Pros: Some good stories and ideas (but nothing that you couldn't find in any other marketing book of higher quality).

Cons: As another reviewer suggested, the author merely gives examples of successful ads and tries to explain how they worked because they went against the grain and got a lot of attention. Well, I could have told you that! The real problem lies in the author's conclusions. The underlying theme seems to be: "Do the opposite of whatever you think will work best." If you think an ad is tasteless, inappropriate, and irrelevant, then run it because it will be a great success. If the ad has nothing whatsoever to do with the product, then it is more likely to succeed. For example, one of her "bright" ideas is: "You must forget about what makes sense...illogical thinking means that when you're asked to promote a bottle of water, you realize that water is the last thing you should focus on."

Conclusion: I give this book a rating of 1.5 stars. Don't waste your time on this book.

Not Very Helpful

If you have a marketing budget over $20M a year, then this book could be good for you. The rest of us cannot afford to pay millions to make people laugh or just know that we exist. I felt that the whole book was one big advertisement for the authors firm. "look how good We are", and worse yet "Look how great I am". The rabbit trail into organizational consulting and office arrangement was mind-numbing. I found myself yelling in the car and wondering if I had something better to listen to.

If you manage creative people - Get the book
If you have millions to blow on comedy - Get the book
If you are interested in investing so your ad agency can win CLEO's - Get the Book
If you need to generate revenue, reach new customers, engage viewers, listeners, readers, or existing customers, listen to Seth Godins books. Far more practical for all but the upper tier companies.

Good Read

Excellent marketing and business advice.

A One Word Review NARCISSISM

There is an old hollywood joke about a self-absorbed starlite who is at a dinner party and bores the producer seated next to her about how talented she is. When she sees him yawn she finally gets a clue and says, "I'm sorry. I've been doing all of the talking and haven't given you a chance to talk about how great I am."

Undoubtedly the author is a talented person and has earned the bragging rights to numerous successful ad campaigns and one or two examples to prove her point would have been interesting, but the continual "look how great I am" is like covering a single strawberry under the entire contents from a can of whip cream. The message gets lost in all the fluff.

Ironically the "Bang" message has exploded the core essence of how to apply the method into smithereens and few remnants remain. The other problem is that the book is really meant to be a sales tool directed to marketing directors with 5 million plus campaigns to launch. (I say 5 million because the author says that even that is chump change in her circle.)

The essence of the book is that you start by abandonding preconceived ideas about a product, that you start with a blank sheet of paper and approach the project with the idea of turning everything on its head. The test for success is if it doesn't raise a few eyebrows you need to rethink it because to get attention you are bound to stir the ire of a few letter writers.

If you are looking for something along the lines of "Bang" and want more than fluff, then I'd like to suggest Edward De Bono's "Lateral Thinking." It is more of what "Bang" should have been.