How does advertising work?

Chapter 5 positions the contribution more firmly by contrasting the book's position with some of the more commonly held theories of how advertising 'works' according to the mainstream marketing, management and advertising busines literature. The chapter aims to show that extant theories of how advertising works misconstrue both the marketing aims of advertising and the ways in which consumers engage with and understand (or read) advertisements and respond to them. The chapter touches on some old advertising theories that have persisted for a century (such as John E. Kennedy's axiom that advertising is "salesmanship in print") and updates us with more recent ideas from, for example, Byron Sharpe and the Ehrenberg-Bass school. The chapter describes the idea that advertisements do not sell anything, because they are mediated communications, but that, to use Sharpe's terminology, ads generate publicity for the brand to increase 'mental availability', thereby increasing market share.