The Science of Why - David Forbes

                The Science of Why delves into the psychological reasons behind why different people are attracted to different advertisements and how advertisers design the ads towards these personality types. Mr. Forbes is very knowledgeable about this subject as he owns his own consulting firm that deals with helping advertisers understand and market their products to consumers. His high level of intelligence is evident throughout the book as he writes in depth about different personality types and what these types would look for, consciously and unconsciously, in advertisements before buying the product. It often reads like a text book and I’m sure it must be a part of the recommended reading of a marketing course somewhere. I admit there were times my mind wandered a bit but Mr. Forbes does a good job of pulling the reader back in with interesting side notes and, my favorite, real life examples of how certain products and companies have used little tricks to entice different personality types to buy the product. Most of the time he doesn’t name the company or product but it’s fun to speculate which company or product he is referencing. Before reading this book I always thought myself to be fairly savvy at not falling for advertising “candy” but now I realize I’ve fallen for almost all of the tricks of the trade. The Budweiser commercial gets me every single time and I don’t even like beer! David Forbes and this book reminds me of radio personality Terry O’Reilly who discusses the same issues with advertising and I’m a huge fan of his so overall I found this book to be really fascinating. I read the digital version of this book which worked well on my ereader and the cover, although fairly plain, uses the question that plagues most of us, Why, and so caught my eye. This was an interesting and informing read.