ABSTRACT
Welcome to the Fourth Edition of The Advertising Handbook. The central aim of this edition, as with previous ones, is to serve media and advertising students wanting to become more familiar with the practices of today’s advertising industry. As editors, the three of us worked together on the last edition of the book (Powell et al., 2009) as well as this one, but we remain firmly indebted to Sean Brierley for his expert, eloquent, insightful survey of the advertising industry in the first two editions, which have been valued and enjoyed by countless readers. We follow him in saying ‘[t]he aim of this book is to produce not better advertising but better understanding of advertising’ (Brierley, 2002: 3). We also wish to thank Sarah Hawkin who coedited the last edition with us. For the Third Edition, we offered a new organising framework featuring a range of guest contributions from practitioners and academics, and industry case studies alongside our broader, thematic chapters. For this new edition, we seek to offer a clear, comprehensive and accessible introduction to the core activities and processes of contemporary advertising practices. Our authors also explore the on-going reorganisation and transformation of advertising in new media environments worldwide and so continue the breadth and scope of enquiry added in the Third Edition.
