Categories: Articles

Life After The 30-Second Spot Book Review

Life After The 30-Second Spot – Energize Your Brand with a Bold Mix of Alternatives to Traditional Advertising by Joseph Jaffe is a book everyone who is in advertising, marketing and communications should be forced to read before starting their first day on the job. My guess is, this is the one book most marketers wished they had written (I know I wish I had written it) or are scared to read.
Jaffe points a sniper rifle at the advertising world and picks off great opportunities one at a time. By identifying ten quick wins and how to execute them (or, at least, why you should be paying attention to them), Jaffe shines as a marketer who is more inclined to grow a business organically than hop on the word-of-mouth buzz-hype of the moment (which usually results in a quick jump up in brand lift and then a much sharper drop down to irrelevance).
How often have advertising agencies pulled clients aside and proposed a gaming, experiential or branded entertainment program? It’s not always an easy subject for marketers to broach with their clients. Now, thanks to Life After The 30-Second Spot, you have the manual. Jaffe does not provide all of the gory details and answers, but there are enough insights to spark your curiosity and construct a long-term plan that works.
So, is the 30-second spot really dead or is this Jaffe’s marketing shtick to get you reading? “Consumers aren’t as stupid as they used to be,” Jaffe muses. “Rumors of its (the 30-second spot) demise may very well be exaggerated, but they are irrelevant. Using the 30-second spot today is like taking a wooden sword to fight a fire-breathing dragon. You better have fire insurance.”
That “fire-breathing dragon” is you and me. Life After The 30-Second Spot follows the same logic path as anyone who is following Web 2.0, Listenomics and Brand Democratization. It’s getting harder and harder to jam 30-seconds of original exaggeration into a push channel that people hardly care about anymore. We’re all off IM’ing each other as we create a MySpace and Blog about how bad the new screens are on the iPod Nano.
Life After The 30-Second Spot is a must-read. Jaffe uses many strategic examples to highlight the success of people who have dared already and mixes in clever writing to keep the book from coming off as too professorial and boring. He mixes it up real nice. If you’re looking for that last-minute stocking stuffer for the advertising quack on your list, look no further.
Here are some related links:
– Life After The 30-Second Spot Website.
– Joseph Jaffe Website – Get The Juice.
– Joseph Jaffe Blog – Jaffe Juice.
– Joseph Jaffe Podcast – Across The Sound.
Final note: I got Life After The 30-Second Spot for free from Joseph Jaffe. I heard him speak here in Montreal at an IAB Canada (Interactive Advertising Bureau) breakfast event and signed up to be a part of his UNM2PNM – Use New Marketing to Prove New Marketing program. You can view Jaffe’s post about it here: Calling all blogger evangelists: Use New Marketing to Prove New Marketing. If I did not love Life After The 30-Second Spot, I would have said so. This really is a must-read.

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.