Graybeard Lectures: Practical, Old School Advertising

By Mark D Donnelly

Advertising didn't stop working. We just forgot how humans work.

Every year brings new platforms, new metrics, and new promises that this time marketing will finally be solved. And yet, most advertising still struggles to earn attention, build trust, or be remembered beyond the next scroll.

The GGraybeard Lectures: Practical, Old School Advertising is not a book about trends, hacks, or technology. It is a calm, hard-earned field guide to how advertising actually works when real people are involved.

Written in the seasoned voice of a lifelong educator and practitioner, this book distills decades of classroom teaching, boardroom experience, nonprofit campaigns, and brand missteps into clear, human-centered principles that outlast platforms. It explores why attention must be earned, why familiarity beats novelty, why clarity is a strategic advantage, and why emotion decides long before logic explains.

Through real-world anecdotes, quiet humor, and practical insight, the book challenges the habits that make modern marketing busy but ineffective, and replaces them with ideas that build memory, trust, and long-term value.

This is a book for marketers, creatives, nonprofit leaders, educators, and anyone tired of chasing the next thing while forgetting the basics that actually work.

Because the tools will change again.

People won't.

And advertising that respects that truth still works.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1956688668
• ISBN13: 9781956688665
• Release Date: January 1
• Publisher: Rock / Paper / Safety Scissors
• Length: 76 Pages
• Weight: 0.33 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 6.0" x 9.0"