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.

AMC's episodic drama Mad Men has become a cultural phenomenon, detailing America's preoccupation with commercialism and image in the Camelot of 1960s Kennedy-era America, while self-consciously exploring current preoccupations. The 12 critical essays in this collection offer a broad, interdisciplinary approach to this highly relevant television show, examining Mad Men as a cultural barometer for contemporary concerns with consumerism, capitalism and sexism. Topics include New Historicist parallels between the 1960s and the present day, psychoanalytical approaches to the show, the self as commodity, and the "Age of Camelot" as an "Age of Anxiety," among others. A detailed cast list and episode guide are included. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

Stephen Fox explores the consistently cyclical nature of advertising from its beginning. A substantial new introduction updates this lively, anecdotal history of advertising into the mid-1990s. --Publisher.

An intimate and profound reckoning with the changes buffeting the $2 trillion global advertising and marketing business from the perspective of its most powerful players, by the bestselling author of Googled Advertising and marketing touches on every corner of our lives, and the industry is the invisible fuel powering almost all media. Complain about it though we might, without it the world would be a darker place. But of all the industries wracked by change in the digital age, few have been turned on their heads as dramatically as this one. Mad Men are turning into Math Men (and women--though too few), an instinctual art is transforming into a science, and we are a long way from the days of Don Draper. Frenemies is Ken Auletta's reckoning with an industry under existential assault. He enters the rooms of the ad world's most important players, meeting the old guard as well as new powers and power brokers, investigating their perspectives. It's essential reading, not simply because of what it reveals about this world, but because of the potential consequences: the survival of media as we know it depends on the money generated by advertising and marketing--revenue that is in peril in the face of technological changes and the fraying trust between the industry's key players.

Reveling in the consumerist decadence of AMC’s infamous advertising house Sterling Cooper, this complementary volume to the groundbreaking series Mad Men provides behind-the-scenes revelations, episode guides, cast biographies, and rich sidebar content, including “How to Party Like the Mad Men.” Delving beneath the glitz and glamour to highlight the workings of a sophisticated modern classic, this definitive fan guide also offers fascinating sociological context and cultural analysis. The details of historical ad campaigns that are woven into the show’s storylines are provided—such as Volkswagen Beetle’s landmark “Think Small” campaign, the Nixon/Kennedy presidential push, and the creation of Lucky Strike’s “It’s toasted” slogan. This is the ultimate guide to a series that has been praised by the New York Times, Time magazine, and USA Today.

Adland is a ground-breaking examination of modern advertising, from its early origins, to the evolution of the current advertising landscape. Bestselling author and journalist Mark Tungate examines key developments in advertising, from copy adverts, radio and television, to the opportunities afforded by the explosion of digital media - podcasting, text messaging and interactive campaigns. Adland focuses on key players in the industry and features exclusive interviews with leading names in advertising today, including Jean-Marie Dru, Sir Alan Parker, John Hegarty and Sir Martin Sorrell, as well as industry luminaries from the 20th Century such as Phil Dusenberry and George Lois. Exploring the roots of the advertising industry in New York and London, and going on to cover the emerging markets of Eastern Europe, Asia and Latin America, Adland offers a comprehensive examination of a global industry and suggests ways in which it is likely to develop in the future.

Mad Men has captured the imaginations of millions of viewers, winning fifteen golden globes and four Emmys. Perhaps more than the gorgeously stylized visuals and impeccably re-created history, it's the show's richly drawn characters stumbling through their personal and professional lives that get under our skin and keep us invested. In Mad Menon the Couch, Dr. Stephanie Newman analyzes the show's primary characters through the lens of modern psychology. Lending her trained professional eye, she poses and expertly answers pressing questions such as: Why does Don constantly sabotage himself? Why is Betty such a cold mother and desperately unhappy housewife? (Hint: It's not just because her "people are Nordic.") Why does Pete prevail in adversity when Roger crumbles? Why is Peggy able to rise profesionally in the male jungle of Madison Avenue when Joan can't? Can these characters ever really change? With critical commentary that is both entertaining and insightful, Mad Men on the Couch will provide viewers with a unique persepctive on the show.

"What corporations fear most are consumers who ask questions. Naomi Klein offers us the arguments with which to take on the superbrands." Billy Bragg from the bookjacket.

There is a fundamental disconnection between the way business people speak and real people communicate. From advertisers, big business and CEOs - the blather is coming at us in waves. The International Language of Business is no longer English - it's gobbledygook. The authors blindly discovered the enormity of the problem in June 2003 with the launch of Bullfighter, an anti-jargon software tool. But jargon is just one symptom in a larger problem afflicting corporate communications today: the wholesale inability to connect with an audience. In the form of admirably straight-talk, we discover how to avoid the 'obscurity trap', 'the anonymity trap', the 'hard-sell trap' and most importantly, 'the tedium trap'. In this witty and practical new book readers are given all the tools they need to fight the 'spin' and learn to speak like the rest of us.

The National Book Award finalist and debut novel by the bestselling author of The Dinner Party: "A readymade classic of the office-novel genre. . . . A truly affecting novel about work, trust, love, and loneliness." --Seattle Times No one knows us quite the same way as the men and women who sit beside us in department meetings and crowd the office refrigerator with their labeled yogurts. Every office is a family of sorts, and the ad agency Joshua Ferris brilliantly depicts in his debut novel is family at its strangest and best, coping with a business downturn in the time-honored way: through gossip, pranks, and increasingly frequent coffee breaks. With a demon's eye for the details that make life worth noticing, Joshua Ferris tells a true and funny story about survival in life's strangest environment--the one we pretend is normal five days a week.