Have you ever bought a book on business marketing to help you in your own business? Well many of us have and we have probably also bought tapes and other helpful materials to help us in our advertising. After reading hundreds and hundreds of marketing books over the 27-years in my business, it became rather obvious that much of what these marketing gurus proclaimed simply was not so.

In fact much of their tips were either too obvious to be of any value or completely wrong in my opinion. Then as the years progressed and fMRI brain scanning came about I realized that I had been right all along and the advertising and marketing books and all their tips were nothing more than myths.

For example they would say when advertising make sure it is relevant to your company or its products? Makes sense right? Well actually that is a myth because you need to shock your viewer to trigger a neuron impression event first and then say something you want them to remember. Is We Try Harder relevant to car rentals? Absolutely not, yet it works and was on of the best advertising campaigns ever.

Advertising consultants and marketing specialists (self-proclaimed) also say communicate to the customer benefits, make proposition or offer, use a shocking testimonial, get feedback or even try different headlines, messages and then they say things like;

One just never knows what folks will respond to until you try.

Then they tell you to try different things, which in fact will dilute your brand and wash out the best messages, which you have previously used. They tell you to be creative, yet box you into a set of bogus myths about advertising and Marketing. So be careful never to listen to self-proclaimed marketing experts. Consider this in 2006.