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Reviews of 101 Contrarian Ideas About Advertising

The following are excerpts from reviews at Amazon. You can read the full reviews here.

Brilliant stuff, funny as hell.,
Stephen McGill
Stumbled across the Ad Contrarian blog a while ago and… it is by far my favourite blog. I grabbed this wonderful book as soon as I could as I wanted to have the best of Bob close at hand…. As a long time ad guy who cut his teeth on the work of Ogilvy,

The Year In Contrariana

Every year about this time the editorial board of The Ad Contrarian gets together for its annual year-end analysis. This consists of large plates of pasta, several pitchers of martinis, and an afternoon of irresponsible betting on bowl games.

Sometimes we even talk about the blog.

2011 was an interesting year here at Ad Contrarian world headquarters. Here are the highlights, as chosen by the

The Ten Amendments

Since Christmas and Hannukah are this week, I am publishing this guest post I received recently from a Very Important Being.

I am starting to get annoyed with you people. The universe is a large territory to cover and I’ve got a lot on my plate. I take my eye off you for a couple of thousand years and what do I find when I get back? You’re putting rings through your eyebrows and pineapple on

Comparing Apples and Amazons

My recent foray into publishing an ebook has been a real eye-opener.

I am a very big fan of Apple products. I believe they make beautiful products that are generally easy and delightful to use. The service in their retail stores is usually outstanding.

Dealing with "corporate" Apple, however, has been a complete nightmare. They are the epitome of everything that's wrong with the tech industry.

Advertising, Education, and Science

I love science. The reason I love it is that unlike marketing and advertising, science does not obediently accept the word of "experts."

In science, it doesn't matter what your title is, or how many awards you've won, or how many conferences you've spoken at, or how big your weenie is. If you can't prove your premise, you're done.

No proof, no dice.

Even today, Einstein's ideas about gravity

Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens had such an original mind that it was almost impossible to agree with him on everything. But even when you disagreed, you continued to be in awe.

I still can't get used to the idea that people really die.

“The wise understand by themselves; fools follow the reports of others”-- Tibetan proverb.

Just In Time For The Holidays -- Contrar-A-Thon!

I read an article in The Wall Street Journal last week that said the way to get a best-selling ebook is to sell it for 99¢.

Since it doesn't cost me anything to print the book -- it's just a bunch of electrons or pixels or something -- I thought, what the hell, let's sell it for 99¢ and see what happens.

So for the next five days, you can get my new book 101 Contrarian Ideas About Advertising