In 18th-century England, a family of obstetricians built a huge practice by delivering babies with a lower rate of infant and maternal mortality than their competitors. They had a secret – and guarded it jealously, until an inquisitive medical student climbed onto the roof of their delivering room, looked through the skylight and saw the forceps they had invented. The secret was out, to the benefit of all obstetricians and their patients. Today’s obstetricians do not keep their discoveries secret, they publish them. I am grateful to my partners for allowing me to publish mine. But I should add that the occasional opinions expressed in this book do not necessarily reflect the collegial opinions of the agency which employs me. This is not a book for readers who think they already know all there is to be known about advertising. It is for young hopefuls – and veterans who are still in search of ways to improve their batting average at the cash register. I write only about aspects of advertising I know from my own experience. That is why this book contains nothing about media, cable television or advertising in Japan. If you think it is a lousy book, you should have seen it before my partner Joel Raphaelson did his best to de-louse it. Bless you, Joel. 1 Testy, a grumbler, inclined to praise the way of the world when he was a boy, to play the critic and to be a censor of the new generation.