Mad For Ads

A critical and entertaining exploration of advertising and its influence. For children growing up in an advertising-saturated world, here’s an eye-opening explanation of what it is, how it works and why that matters. The book covers everything from the components of an ad campaign to the ways marketers seek to influence behavior, then brings it all to life by creating two fictional advertising plans. It also describes how digital technology allows companies to track people and how that impacts privacy. It’s a savvy look at the business of advertising that empowers kids to think critically and be discerning. Kids are suckers for advertising? Not the ones who read this book!

A critical and entertaining exploration of advertising and its influence. For children growing up in an advertising-saturated world, here’s an eye-opening explanation of what it is, how it works and why that matters. The book covers everything from the components of an ad campaign to the ways marketers seek to influence behavior, then brings it all to life by creating two fictional advertising plans. It also describes how digital technology allows companies to track people and how that impacts privacy. It’s a savvy look at the business of advertising that empowers kids to think critically and be discerning. Kids are suckers for advertising? Not the ones who read this book!

It is easy to dismiss advertising as simply the background chatter of modern life, often annoying, sometimes hilarious, and ultimately meaningless. But Kerri P. Steinberg argues that a careful study of the history of advertising can reveal a wealth of insight into a culture. In Jewish Mad Men, Steinberg looks specifically at how advertising helped shape the evolution of American Jewish life and culture over the past one hundred years. Drawing on case studies of famous advertising campaigns—from Levy’s Rye Bread (“You don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s”) to Hebrew National hot dogs (“We answer to a higher authority”)—Steinberg examines advertisements from the late nineteenth-century in New York, the center of advertising in the United States, to trace changes in Jewish life there and across the entire country. She looks at ads aimed at the immigrant population, at suburbanites in midcentury, and at hipster and post-denominational Jews today. In addition to discussing campaigns for everything from Manischewitz wine to matzoh, Jewish Mad Men also portrays the legendary Jewish figures in advertising—like Albert Lasker and Bill Bernbach—and lesser known “Mad Men” like Joseph Jacobs, whose pioneering agency created the brilliantly successful Maxwell House Coffee Haggadah. Throughout, Steinberg uses the lens of advertising to illuminate the Jewish trajectory from outsider to insider, and the related arc of immigration, acculturation, upward mobility, and suburbanization. Anchored in the illustrations, photographs, jingles, and taglines of advertising, Jewish Mad Men features a dozen color advertisements and many black-and-white images. Lively and insightful, this book offers a unique look at both advertising and Jewish life in the United States.

Maas offers a wickedly funny, inside look at what it was really like to be an ad woman on Madison Avenue in the 1960s and 1970s, from casual sex to professional serfdom, in this immensely entertaining and bittersweet memoir.

Frank Palmer is a legend in the Canadian advertising world. He not only developed Palmer Jarvis, one of the country’s most acclaimed marketing communications agencies (and then became chairman and CEO of DDB Canada after selling Palmer Jarvis to the multinational ad giant), he is also credited with changing the face of Canadian advertising. “He’s the only Western Canadian ad man who went to Toronto and wound up owning the town,” says former employee and now friendly rival Chris Staples. Fellow ad man Bob Bryant elaborates, “What Frank also did that no other agency owner was able to do was become a star. No one else personified a company the way he did. He became the iconic brand of his own business.” Palmer has earned a reputation for obtaining clients at any cost. He has clawed his way to prominence with wit, an uncanny knowledge of what constitutes effective advertising, and a business acumen nothing short of encyclopedic. Having started out as the boy last chosen for the baseball team by his peers, he set his sights on living his life in the role of the chooser—not the one waiting to be chosen. Palmer is a fascinating study in contrasts. Though he always took his role as an employer seriously, at times his private life was a mess. And while his bald head and thick neck give him the look of someone you wouldn’t want to encounter on a dark street, he’s a notorious trickster—be it by placing an octopus under a colleague’s pillow or lacing a friend’s coffee cup with dental anaesthesia. At the same time, Palmer is almost as well known for his philanthropic work as for his business acuity and practical jokes. In this lively biography, Robin Brunet captures the exhilarating experience of being in the presence of such a charismatic and driven man. Brunet’s wealth of interviews with the man himself and those who know him best get to the root of what it means to be Frank Palmer.

A bestselling author and advertising veteran shares a life’s lessons from the ad trade. Dave Marinaccio, cofounder and the creative director of LMO Advertising, is a veteran of the industry who, as a young man starting out, studied stand-up at Second City in Chicago. He later wrote an international bestseller, All I Really Need to Know I Learned from Watching Star Trek. His equally entertaining new book takes us inside the world of advertising, offering stories and observations from his three decades at some of America's best-known agencies, working with clients from Pizza Hut to the Holocaust Museum. In short, punchy chapters, Dave pulls back the curtain and shares his insights on how marketing decisions are made and other lessons. His topics range from logos, the big idea, and selling perfume to how we undervalue our gifts, to do-overs, celebrities, and "meetingsmanship." And more than a few lessons turn out to be apt not just for business but for our stressed-out lives. Admen, Mad Men, and the Real World of Advertising is written to be easily digestible by interns, CEOS, or anyone who has ever watched a television commercial or clicked on a banner ad. Irreverent, packed with useful information, and unflinchingly honest, it is a serious business book by a seriously funny man and a must for anyone who lives, works, or plays in today's commercial culture.

Mad Men's Don Draper has nothing on Fred Goldberg, and this memoir is the real story of mad men in a very mad world This celebrated ad man cut his teeth in the late 1960s with the legendary agency Young & Rubicam, took over operations at Chiat/Day as COO for almost 7 years, and then founded his own firm, Goldberg Moser O'Neill. His client list reads like a who's who of 20th-century innovators: Steve Jobs (Apple), Andy Grove (Intel), John Chambers (Cisco), Larry Ellison (Oracle), and Michael Dell (Dell) are just a few of the movers and shakers who turned to him when they needed ads that would make their products household names.The Insanity of Advertising presents an unforgettable glimpse into the chaos, drama, and outright wackiness that fuels one of the most of loved and hated industries in the world. Goldberg reveals behind-the-scenes dirt on what it was like to craft ad campaigns for some corporate titans, and also shares stories of the mad men who worked alongside him.