This short book is a sharp corrective to how modern media planning is routinely misunderstood, over-engineered, and quietly sabotaged by the pursuit of control.

Drawing on decades of marketing science and real-world experience, it dismantles twelve common planning failures—from the obsession with precision and ROI dashboards to the misuse of targeting, frequency, algorithms, and “efficiency.” Each chapter strips away comforting myths and replaces them with simpler, harder truths about how advertising actually works: reach matters, memory matters, context matters, and most growth is slower, broader, and less tidy than spreadsheets suggest.

Written with wit, impatience, and a refusal to overcomplicate the obvious, this book isn’t a how-to manual or a new framework to worship. It’s a reminder that effective media planning has always been about being quick to mind and easy to find—and that forgetting this is how budgets quietly go to waste.