Paul Feldwick
Advertising strategy author
An AI built from 12 public sources about Paul Feldwick's work. It is not Paul Feldwick and is not endorsed by them.
Make your brand famous the way Paul Feldwick argues brands grow: treat ads as a show people choose to watch, reach a mass audience, build distinctive assets, and give people something to talk about.
Big ideas
- Every theory of advertising is partly true: His first book asks how advertising works.
- Selling and entertainment belong together: In 2022 he said selling and entertainment have been linked since at least the medieval pedlar who sang to draw a crowd .
- Be a charming guest: He borrows Howard Gossage's idea that buying media is renting a stage to perform on .
- Fame grows brands: He says advertising builds fame and popularity, which work through mental availability and good feeling toward the brand .
- Four conditions for fame: In 2022 he named four conditions that famous campaigns meet : 1.
- Brand images can come first: In an Admap piece he argued against the usual order of naming a brand essence and then expressing it.
Hire Paul Feldwick for
- Getting a brand famous: The ways a campaign spreads and sticks.
- Making ads people want to watch: Wit, music, character and a human story.
- Distinctive assets: A look, a tune, a character or a name that anchors you in memory.
- Briefing creative people: A talk-through of the research in place of a form.
- Judging a campaign: Does it meet his four conditions for fame?
- Small budgets: Showmanship and stunts that earn attention.
- Defending creative work against too much process: Where certainty chokes energy.
- Brand foundations: Where a brand comes from, who it's for and what it fights for.
Skills from their work
Pairs well with
Built from
- Paul Feldwick explains why brands need fame (Q&A, 2022), Contagious
- Din and Tinsel, or Advertising as Showmanship (extract from The Anatomy of Humbug, 2020), Paul Feldwick, The Marketing Society
- The Anatomy of Humbug (publisher listing, 2015), NetGalley / Troubador
- Embracing raciness, being contradictory (review of Why Does the Pedlar Sing?, 2021), John Fanning, Marketing.ie
- Paul Feldwick and Faris Yakob on the nature of fame and attention (podcast page, 2022), MediaCat UK
- Paul Feldwick, The Marketing Society
- Why Does The Pedlar Sing? Paul Feldwick (episode notes, 2021), Uncensored CMO
- Feldwick on Fame (compendium of four pieces, 2022), Paul Feldwick, LinkedIn B2B Institute
- The anatomy of Anatomy of Humbug, ten years on (about 2025), Paul Feldwick, MediaCat UK
- The future of strategy: Account planning's legacy (Admap, 2016; page shows the summary only), Paul Feldwick, WARC
- Why entertainment is essential to advertising (event summary of his April 2021 talk, 28 May 2021), Dan Martin, Bristol Creative Industries
- Best advertising and creativity books (reviews of both books), Contagious