Commonsense Direct Marketing

Average customer rating:

Great book for a learner

perfect to understand the practical side of marketing

This is it! Everything you need to know about the business

Yellow everywhere

Commonsense Direct Marketing
Drayton Bird
Manufacturer: Kogan Page
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
Advertising | Marketing & Sales | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
Direct | Marketing | Marketing & Sales | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
General | Marketing | Marketing & Sales | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

How to Write Sales Letters That Sell

Direct Marketing: Strategy, Planning, Execution

The Complete Guide to Direct Marketing: Creating Breakthrough Programs That Really Work

Marketing Insights and Outrages

The Adweek Copywriting Handbook: The Ultimate Guide to Writing Powerful Advertising and Marketing Copy from One of America's Top Copywriters

ASIN: 0749431210

Book Description

As direct marketing activities are now allocated a higher marketing budget than ever before, due to the opening up of technologies in this area, it is more important that this medium is understood.To plan and execute a dynamic and ongoing campaign, and to successfully deploy the new technology now at our disposal, any marketer need look no further than Drayton Bird's latest edition. In his lively style, Bird shows the reader how to plan clearly, reach the right audience and turn ideas into brilliant campaigns. This book provides information which guarantees results and the opportunity to learn the success secrets of one of the world's most respected direct marketing gurus.

Customer Reviews:

Great book for a learner.......1999-09-20

Possibly a great book for those that know something alreadytoo, just look at the endorsements. Not a step by step book - no hardand fast rules to DM - goes to the principals derives guidelines and provides examples. A good approach that suited me - I always want to know why something should be done a certain way not just follow a prescription.

perfect to understand the practical side of marketing.......1999-06-22

I read a number of marketing books before this one,but after read Drayton's book I understand how to create and execute a direct campaign.The best side is,I think, the simple words due to the writer experience in the marketing business .If you are looking for the best combination of experience and easy reading with a ''How to...'' aproach ,this book is the best.

This is it! Everything you need to know about the business.......1998-07-22

This book contains all of the information you need to know about direct marketing. It puts aside the myth regarding the 1-2% return on mailings. I had no idea that a 50% return was possible! The book is full of proven advice and tips; planning, list selection, the offer, pricing...it goes on and on. Reading it from cover to cover gave me the information necessary to execute my own mailing which cost me less than $200 but reaped close to $100,000. Read it!

Yellow everywhere.......1997-08-20

Every good idea in a book deserves a wipe of a highlighter pen. My copy of this book ended up with over half of the page real estate in fluorescent yellow.

Why? It's full of excellent tips, encouragement and dry humour for anyone who communicates in print - and that's most of us. And for once, the testimonials are accurate; his ex-employer, David Ogilvy (of Ogilvy & Mather fame) says "Drayton Bird knows more about direct marketing than anyone else in the world. His book about it is pure gold".

His only deviates from his own advice once - there is no address to reply to him. Apart from that, I recommend this to all my friends - and hide it from my enemies!

Average customer rating:
Commonsense Direct Marketing
Drayton Bird
Manufacturer: Kogan Page
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000KKNZGQ

Average customer rating:
Commonsense Direct Marketing
Drayton Bird
Manufacturer: Global Business Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 8172400446

Book Description

A must-have business title that includes an account of Warren Buffett's life and a presentation of the theories, tactics, secrets, and strategies for investing that made him billions.

Un relato de la vida del Sr. Buffett que demuestra los secretos, teorías, y estrategias de inversiones que le hizo billones de dólares.

Amazon.com

This is the David-and-Goliath story of how an American bureaucrat took on the tobacco industry--and helped topple it. David Kessler, head of the Food and Drug Administration for seven years under Presidents Bush and Clinton, earned the nickname "Eliot Knessler" from The Washington Post--a pun meant to evoke the memory of the Prohibition-era gangbuster--because he rejuvenated a moribund agency. The FDA regulated, in Kessler's words, "one quarter of every dollar Americans spent--from the food they eat to the drugs they take to the cosmetics they wear." Yet it lacked the courage to take on the country's most lethal product: cigarettes. So did Kessler, at least initially. He agreed with aides and others that Big Tobacco was too powerful a force in Washington, D.C. "The industry perceived threats everywhere, and responded to them ferociously," he writes. Moreover, challenging the industry would waste important resources that could have a more tangible benefit for consumers if they were spent elsewhere. Even before making the choice to go after cigarettes, Kessler was a figure of controversy, and this only intensified when he became one of the few Republican holdovers in the Clinton administration.

Much of the book deals with the routine business of the FDA: orange-juice seizures, a fight to restrict the sale of body tissues from foreign sources, how he responded to complaints that syringes were found in Pepsi cans, and so on. But the driving force behind Kessler's narrative is how he slowly woke up to the possibility of regulating cigarettes. "It is too easy to be swayed by the argument that tobacco is a legal product and should be treated like any other," he writes. "A product that kills people--when used as intended--is different. No one should be allowed to make a profit from that." His story is a lesson in Washington power politics--a game he played with naiveté when he started but was expert at by the end of his tenure.

To say Kessler and his team of FDA regulators "defeated" Big Tobacco is an overstatement: they were part of a broader effort that included trial lawyers, consumer groups, and crusading journalists, and the industry hasn't exactly gone away. But they were instrumental in forcing tobacco companies to admit that nicotine is addictive and cigarettes cause cancer, and in bringing about a sea change in the industry's legal and popular standing. Kessler now believes in regulation so tight it will strangle Big Tobacco forever: "If our goal is to halt this manmade epidemic," he writes, "the tobacco industry, as currently configured, needs to be dismantled." A Question of Intent is a well-told muckraker. It unfolds deliberately, like a good detective story. Admirers of Jonathan Harr's A Civil Action, especially those with a taste for public policy, won't be disappointed. --John J. Miller

Book Description

Now in paperback: former FDA commissioner David Kessler's non-fiction legal thriller about his agency's fight with Big Tobacco. Dubbed "Eliot Knessler" by The Washington Post, due to the way he resurrected a moribund government agency, FDA Commissioner David Kessler launched a carefully considered, thorough, and aggressive assault against the previously unassailable tobacco industry. His attempt to regulate tobacco as a drug was met with all of the industry's now notorious practices: legal stonewalling, manipulation of "bought" elected officials, intimidation, and outright lies. Kessler tackled all of these challenges with the vigor of a man perhaps outgunned but not outmaneuvered. At the height the FDA's legal battle, U.S. News and World Report called Kessler "somebody you can tell your children about" and compared him to the protagonists of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and To Kill a Mockingbird. Like those classic American stories, A Question of Intent is about the search for truth, the choices people make, and right and wrong. It is about moral courage.

Customer Reviews:

An Educating and Entertaining Read.......2007-04-25

David Kessler in A Question of Intent: A Great American Battle with a Deadly Industry provides readers with an entertaining and educating read that serves as a guide for organizations while showing an detailed view of bureaucracy, the media, and government organizations. He effectively displays the numerous benefits of affiliation between organizations and their leaders when trying to change the regulation over tobacco. Kessler also does a great job showing the role of a President and the effect he or she can have on organizations when they get to choose the leading personnel. Where Kessler falls short though is in providing a well organized story, free of excess personal narratives, and repetition. Do these errors tend to negate the quality of the book as a whole? No, but it makes me question his editor and the intentions he or she had in the scattered layout and whether included memoir aspects were entirely necessary.

By bringing the reader directly into the Food and Drug Administration's everyday happenings, Kessler is able to display the decision process of a government organization, while adding an element of suspense. His emphasizes the importance of connections and affiliation and teaches readers the scope and impact that lobbyists can have on the outcome of policies. He often describes that "too late" he realized that he had been "sandbagged by...lobbyists" and "overlooked [the] key tactical step" of lining up more support and connections (Kessler, 48). He shows that it was only through the support of his older staff and political connections that he was able to move forward in his fight for tobacco regulation.

The involvement of the reader in the processes Kessler and his team had to go through to get government attention on the regulation of tobacco could easily serve as a guide for other struggling organizations. He shows in detail how they used the media and were careful about their timing when making decisions. For instance, Kessler asked credible journalists to downplay stories to the New York Times to the extent that newspapers wouldn't even write about events such as the American Red Cross' bad blood supply. This manipulation of the media was useful to the organization by downplaying bad press and avoiding un-needed fear and panic. For other organizations who find themselves in the heat of the media, they might want to take notes from Kessler and his experiences

Another positive aspect of Kessler's book was his ability to show the vital role of the President. Most readers, like myself, would be surprised to learn that the President can have such a vital effect on issues such as food labeling. Kessler describes the difficulty and "maneuvering" it took to get amendments on the underage purchases of cigarettes on the Presidents desk (Kessler, 98). Once they got there, he describes how a Congressional hearing was crucial in how the media framed the issue - eventually leading to the impression the American public got on the topic. Overall, his book gives a great overview of what it takes to get an issue to the desk of the President, and how the steps taken after that can shape public opinion and determine the fate or success of a proposed amendment.

In the end, Kessler and his editor could have improved on the organization of the book. The subject of each 3-7 page chapter skips from topic to topic. It gets tedious when the reader has to continually shift his or her focus from tobacco to fresh food labels to the AIDS drug progression then back to tobacco - all with a little autobiographical information thrown into the mix. At the same time, Kessler consistently switches between using character's first and last names. One minute he's calling a successful reporter "Jim," like they're best friends, the next referring to him as "O'Hara" who had a "reputation among reporters for credibility" (Kessler, 92). The inconsistency is unnecessary and confusing.

Another detail that distracted from a smooth read from a trustworthy author, is his insistence on showing he "did not know" what he was doing, or that he "should have realized" that many of his decisions would have negative effects. Readers already understand no person is perfect, there is no reason to keep reminding them up to two or three times a page.

For readers who want an entertaining, yet educational read, Kessler's book provides both. While it does have its minor errors and editorial mishaps, his ability to produce a book that readers like a thriller yet explains the inner-workings of bureaucracy in a simple-to-understand way is uncanny. Lessons can be learned by regular readers seeking more information on a much debated topic - the regulation of tobacco - or big organizations looking to revitalize their strategies to achieve greater success in their goals.

great expose of an evil industry.......2005-10-01

America, for all its faults, is the battlefield on which many of the world's most important health questions are being fought. None of those is more important than the questions this excellent book addresses. Is nicotine a narcotic? Are America's major cigarette companies, collectively known as Big Tobacco, deliberately turning their customers into nicotine addicts?

They were the key questions David Kessler tackled when he was Commissioner of America's Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from 1990 to 1997. Kessler, who is now Dean of the Yale University Law School, fought a tenacious battle with Big Tobacco and its powerful allies on Capitol Hill during those years. The battle was so tough and Big Tobacco so ruthless that Kessler and his small team were often compared to Elliot Ness and his small band of Untouchables who slugged it out with Al Capone's army of gangsters and corrupt politicians during the Prohibition years.

Certainly, the tenacity of Big Tobacco in the face of overwhelming evidence that damns its product can only remind the reader of Al Capone and America's Organized Crime, whose sole god is ill gotten money. Big Tobacco practiced, for example, the code of Omerta and, if Kessler is to be believed, former employees who gave evidence against them lived in fear of their lives. Big Tobacco had armies of lawyers and US Congressmen in their corporate pockets. All they seemed short of was organizing the gangland-style hits that were Capone's specialty.

Indeed, the specters of Ness and Capone are never too far away. Kessler hired special investigators trained by America's elite combat forces to interrogate witnesses. One member of Kessler's squad trawled all of America's seaports to uncover key evidence that Big Tobacco had illegally imported genetically modified tobacco into the United States. The book is, in many ways, a classic detective story needing only Humphrey Bogart, Jimmy Cagney, Tom Hanks or some other celluloid figure to bring it to life. It races along from the very first page to the final denouement.

Big Tobacco's four-pronged counter-strategy against the FDA is also equally fast-paced. Working with military precision, it used, as page 169 tells us, frontal assaults, surgical strikes, allied attacks and air cover to overwhelm the offices and efforts of Kessler and his team. Like Organized Crime, Big Tobacco knew what side its bread was buttered on. Like Organized Crime, Big Tobacco's bosses proved themselves to be ruthless and cynical competitors with pitiless cash registers for hearts. Their proud boast was that they had more money than God.

Their vast war chests poisoned public debate in America for many years just as their product continues to poison the bodies of their fellow Americans. As well as the armies of hired lawyers who were central to their strategy, they employed mercenary academics to rubber-stamp their products with a scientific sheen of respectability. The aura of scientific impartiality these academics bartered away helped Big Tobacco's bosses accumulate their almost limitless wealth, buy their way into Capitol Hill and jam the world's hospital cancer wards full with cigarette smokers. Although Kessler names some of these contemptible researchers, he goes much further. By exposing their mercenary motives, he discredits them and Big Tobacco, which paid them their ultimately puny pieces of silver.

The book, despite its topicality, starts off with a quote from the Odes of Horace, which tells us that "The guilty have a head start, and retribution is always slow of start, but it catches up." Fortunately, the net is finally beginning to close in on Big Tobacco and its tainted allies. Thanks to people like Kessler and his team of Untouchables, the nicotine debate is starting to be aired out into the open.

Sometimes, of course, the cure is worse than the disease. Kessler's comments about nicotine nasal sprays should be enough to make anyone feel pity for the nicotine abuser and disgust at the companies which can conceive, let alone peddle such an obnoxious product.

No sympathy whatsoever can be spared for Kessler's villains. Though bloodied, Big Tobacco is far from bowed. It continues to ensnare American schoolchildren with its product and to export its deadly product to the four ends of the earth. Despite Big Tobacco's enviable revenues, its feet of clay and the tissues of lies it surrounds itself with have both been well exposed by this great book, which President Jimmy Carter and a host of other luminaries endorse. The hope must now be, as Kessler puts it, that Big Tobacco will eventually be drummed out of business altogether. Their demise would not only make the air we breathe cleaner. It would also help clean up the corridors of power, which Big Tobacco so thoroughly infected with its own insatiable addiction to the profit motive.

A Breath of Fresh Air.......2004-03-25

Thank you, Dr. Kessler, for pursuing the tobacco dragon and for writing this book. It should be required reading for every medical and divinity school student.

Civics lesson that reads like a thriller.......2002-08-05

Wow. Who would have thought a book on the history of the FDA's handling of tobacco regulation would read like a spy novel? I grabbed this book off the new books shelf at the library, and picked it up expecting to skim through it. Kessler begins with how he was chosen to head the FDA, and introduces several of his staff including the one who started him toward taking on the tobacco industry. Then we get plenty of background including the history, marketing, and laws concerning tobacco.

With all the press on Big Tobacco, I expected them to be shown as fiendish. I've been a member of Americans for Non-Smokers Rights for 20 years, and I've read all about the Industry's dirty tricks, and I fully expected to read about them again here. What I didn't expect to find was the thoroughness in Big Tobacco attempted to discredit the FDA, and Kessler takes us through the political campaigns and counter-campaigns. He shows how Big Tobacco created fake advocacy groups on several issues, leading to their attempt to muzzle the FDA and cut off all their government funding. If you remember the '94 Contract with America and the movement against Big Government, you'll be surprised to find how Big Tobacco co-opted it to fight the FDA, one of the more admired agencies.

If you weren't already cynical about how the US government operates, this book will get you there, even with its descriptions of some of the good guys continually outmaneuvered by the bad ones. Several congress members are shown to be captives of Big Tobacco, doing their dirty work with scripts written by their lobbyists and lawyers.

And speaking of lawyers, one of the most amazing revelations to me ok is how the tobacco industry became captives of their law firms! Yes, instead of working for their clients, the law firms ended up calling all the shots, and the CEOs would read statements prepared by them. The book covers how this came to be.

If you love looking of source material, you'll be busy. Kessler leaves plenty of footnotes in this meaty book for your review. My only complaint is that the book jumps around in places, as the story moves forward or back depending on the topic being covered. But this is a small beef, as the material is so compelling. Find out not only how cigarette's nicotine content was manipulated but how the industry tried to hide this obvious fact from FDA visitors to their manufacturing facilities. Enjoy the victories and despair over the setbacks; this is a policy-wonk's book as written by a Tom Clancy wanna-be.

A Govenment Policy Thriller.......2002-06-24

This is an excellent book. Kessler's story reads like a thriller, but is non-fiction. In addition to the fascinating narrative, Kessler provides along the way many insights into how Washington REALLY works. The most disheartening thing about the book is the extent to which Kessler documents how our political culture is awash with tobacco money; the tentacles of the tobacco companies seemingly reach everywhere. Kessler reveals that many "think tanks" and other public policy mouthpieces--even senators--have been bought by big tobacco and are literally reading from scripts the companies have provided trying to shift tobacco issues into ideological issues involving freedom and democracy. Unfortunately, the tobacco companies usually win with such strategies. Kessler is quite non-partisan in his approach to his topic, so politicians are judged purely by their stance on tobacco. Clinton comes out as wishy-washy, Gore as rock solid, while Dennis Hastert, Newt Gingrich and assorted others come out as shills for big tobacco. A very enlightening and enjoyable book; it will make you yearn for true campaign finance reform.

A Question of Intent: A Great American Battle with a Deadly Industry. (book review): An article from: Trial

Average customer rating:

A Question of Intent: A Great American Battle with a Deadly Industry. (book review): An article from: Trial
Richard A. Daynard
Manufacturer: Association of Trial Lawyers of America
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Trial, published by Association of Trial Lawyers of America on June 1, 2001. The length of the article is 1291 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: A Question of Intent: A Great American Battle with a Deadly Industry. (book review)
Author: Richard A. Daynard
Publication: Trial (Magazine/Journal)
Date: June 1, 2001
Publisher: Association of Trial Lawyers of America
Volume: 37 Issue: 6 Page: 76

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Book Description

This volume explores how development agencies are adapting to challenges, and particularly what issues face nongovernmental organizations.

Changes in the operational environment, specifically the growth in complex emergencies, have changed how NGOs work. The contributors, using case studies to illustrate their analysis, look at both development activity and war-related disaster relief to explore the limits and possibilities of the `charitable enterprise' for future humanitarian efforts. New key issues facing NGOs, such as the extent to which NGOs themselves are now a force in development, their subsidization by national governments, their role in promoting democracy and human rights, and their increasing work in conflict management, are explored.

This clear and highly readable book is aimed at students of international development and at those working in development agencies.

Book Description

Each year thousands of Texas real estate professionals like you rely on the authorship team of this popular MCE title to keep current on Texas Real Estate. Updated each year to match the most current TREC mandates, you will find the topics included are exactly what you need to know to align with current state requirements. The latest figures from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are also included along with contemporary topics affecting the Texas real estate industry. You'll appreciate how the new case studies and engaging writing style that brings the material to life making it relevant and keeping it current.

Keeping Current with Texas Real Estate MCE

Average customer rating:

Keeping Current with Texas Real Estate MCE
John P. Wiedemer Charles J. Jacobus
Manufacturer: South-Western Educational Pub
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OUNQOS

Average customer rating:

Keeping Current with Texas Real Estate, MCE
Charles Jacobos
Manufacturer: South-Western Educational Pub
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OUAERU

Average customer rating:

Keeping Current with Texas Real Estate, MCE
Charles J.; Wiedemer, John P. Jacobus
Manufacturer: South-Western Educational Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OUNP12

Book Description

A detailed and absorbing history of the Galician city of Tsanz, home to such luminaries as Rabbi Chaim Tsanzer. The author, a scion of a prominent Tsanz family, gives a gripping account of his own experiences during the Holocaust, including his miraculous reunion with a lost sister forty years after the War's end.

Customer Reviews:

The Vanished City of Tsanz.......2000-07-06

This book is an in-depth look at chassidic jewish life in the town of Nowy Sanz or Tsanz as the jews called it. The book describes the jewish history of the town and is filled with stories about the various rabbis and characters of the town. One gets the feeling of peering through a looking glass back in time before the holocaust and getting a true sense he liniage of the rabbis, what the town looked like, the people in the town leading the reader almost to the point of smelling the shabbos meal. He discusses in deatil the history of the Divrei Chaim and the descendants of the great Rabbai Halberstam. He gives a detailed description of how many the jewish holidays were celebrated and the prayers said. He paints vivid pictures of the people of the region and how the town was a center for chassidic life in southern Galicia.

Approximately 2/3 of the book takes place in prewar Tsanz. The last 1/3 is a stunning first hand account of his life in the camps and the people he runs into and how he survived. As I read the book I could it brought home the feelings of the brutality of the Nazis.

I highly recommend this book for anyone wanting to get a true sense of Jewish life before during and after WWII

Books:

Books Index

Books Home

Recommended Books