Question: Who is the intended audience?
Answer:

•Entrepreneurs
•Solopreneurs
•Business owners
•Marketers
•Creative talent in marketing, advertising, and promotion departments
•Advertising, entrepreneurship, and marketing students

Q: What is the book about?
A: This handy guide is packed with excellent visual examples, comments by top creative talents, applicable advertising techniques and more. Marketers, entrepreneurs and students looking to learn how to write powerful copy, design great layouts, use color and type effectively, develop heart-stopping headlines and think more creatively, will find this is book is an invaluable resource.

Written in an easy-to-read style, readers will learn specific techniques to create an on-target consistent look, choose an appropriate tone of voice, and create an on-strategy message for their materials, so their promotions will be noticed, not invisible. Creating advertising and marketing campaigns that deliver a “wow” effect require the kind of innovative and strategic thinking explored in this work.

Applauded by Al Ries, co-author of the advertising classics, Positioning: The Battle For Your Mind and The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, this book is “loaded with lots of great ideas and concepts. Guaranteed to stimulate your thinking and your creative juices.”

Jay Conrad Levinson, author of the Guerrilla Marketing book series sums it up best: “In Street-Smart Advertising, Margo Berman gives you the answers to the questions you must ask if you’re embarking upon a battle for the buzz that you want to be sure to win.”

Q: Why are you the best person to write this book?
A: Margo Berman is an award-winning creative director, speaker, inventor and professor of Advertising and PR at Florida International University. She was a marketing consultant for 20 years, with her own ad and PR agency – Global Impact. She’s won numerous regional, national, and international creative awards for clients like American Express, Alamo Rent A Car, and Banana Boat.

Margo’s produced and hosted an interview talk show in Miami: Artists About Themselves. And has written articles for journals and reference publications including the Encyclopedia of Advertising.

As a corporate trainer, she conducts seminars and webinars in the areas or creativity, advertising and branding. Margo invented tactikPAK®, a patented system of learning in nine business disciplines (U.S. Patent No. 5,927,987).

She also has created the training series Mental Peanut Butter® and co-authored three books on spirituality. Street-Smart Advertising: How To Win the Battle of the Buzz™ was released in September of 2006 by Rowman & Littlefield. Margo has produced two 6-part webinar series based on her book: Street-Smart Advertising and More Street-Smart Advertising. She also has CDs and DVDs on Mental Peanut Butter®, How to Write Killer Copy, How to Create Great Ads at Breakneck Speed and How to Keep Your Creative Juices Flowing, as well as an inspirational program: Soaring, Not Just Flying.

Currently, she is writing her next advertising book, which will be released in 2008, by the same publisher. The working title is Collaborative Copy and Design: Strategic Visual & Verbal Solutions.

Margo has received Outstanding Teaching and Research Awards from the university. She was the 2001 Woman of the Year in Communications Education. In 2004, her Web site, www.UnlockTheBlock.com won a national Clarion Award. In 2005, she was named a Kauffman Faculty Scholar. Then, in 2006, she received the Dean’s Outstanding Faculty of the Year Award.

Margo Berman brings a rare clarity to an often-mystifying topic: marketing mastery.

Q: How is this book different from other books on this topic?
A: Rich in relevant insights, Street-Smart Advertising: How to Win the Battle of the Buzz offers hands-on techniques for powerful writing, innovative design, and precise use of color, enhanced by stimulating exercises. Included are firsthand comments from the creators of some of today’s most innovative campaigns, such as the Aflac “Duck,” Subway’s “Eat Fresh,” and Burger King’s “Subservient Chicken.” In easy-to-understand language, Berman gets to the heart of creating on-strategy, on-target advertising messages that are easy-to-grasp and hard-to-forget. The book explains the latest, most effective methods to understand and engage the consumer through observational research, media intersection, and interactive media.

In addition, it includes more than 60 visual examples, typographical examples, quotes from creative talent, case studies, self-promotion examples, international color chart, and creative exercises to stimulate right brain thinking. Berman’s book doesn’t just discuss new ways to reach a specific audience it also clearly shows how to develop breakthrough campaigns that create a buzz.

Q: Is there anything else we should know about this book?
A: Anyone looking for a handy how-to marketing guide will love being able to read the chapters in any order. For example, readers can:

•Improve their strategic and critical thinking skills in chapters one, six, and nine

•Delve into the power of typography in chapters two and three

•Fine-tune their graphic design skills in chapters four and seven

•Strengthen their promotional writing with easy-to-apply slogan development and writing techniques in chapter five

•Understand the psychology of color in chapter eight

•Gain insight into campaigns through short case studies in chapter ten

•Learn about powerful self-promotions in chapter eleven

•The visual references throughout the book will help everyone gain a deeper appreciation of how innovative campaigns work and what makes them so memorable.