THE MAD AD YEARS, India’s first advertising fiction, with top advertising agencies in India as the backdrop, brings into light and uncovers scandals and exploitations in the real world of advertising through the eyes of the protagonist Prashant Gupta, who has worked in some of the largest agencies in the country for nearly forty-five years. The story encircles his journey from being a 22-year-old simple graduate from a traditional joint family in Calcutta who in 1976 accidentally gets a job of a Management Trainee in India’s most glamorous and second largest agency, to rubbing shoulders with business tycoons and famous industrialists, to witnessing dramatic and salacious incidents and being directly and indirectly involved in many instances that changed Indian advertising forever, and to becoming the owner of a hundred-crore agency, later in his life. Tangy, wild and bittersweet – THE MAD AD YEARS is not just a book but an irresistible concoction of ink on paper that makes you visualise the characters and incidents as if they are moving and happening right in front of you – it is a lot like the bizarrely beautiful coffee-cherry tea Cascara – it ceaselessly makes you crave for more – as your flip through the book, you will keep letting your soul feed on the intoxicating urge to explore how the story unfolds.

An illustrated history of the most influential and unique humor magazine in post-war America.

"MADvertising" showcases the very best of "MAD"'s fifty-plus years of takeoffs on Madison Avenue. Fans will love these hundreds of spoofs of legendary ad campaigns, plus hilarious behind-the-scenes interviews with the Usual Gang of Idiots. But wait, there's more! Get ready for two Galleries of Sin, featuring every twist on cigarette and alcohol advertising ever done by the magazine; a section highlighting "legitimate" ads by "MAD" artists; a discussion of "MAD"'s longtime no-advertising policy; plus (yes!) all-time favorite takeoffs on Madison Avenue culture, including the immortal musical "My Fair Ad Man" and "The "MAD" Madison Avenue Primer."

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!

For the past six decades (that's 60 years-we did the math so you don't have to) MAD Magazine has keenly observed the American landscape and promptly made fun of everything in sight. Unwavering in their commitment to high quality stupidity, MAD's legendary artists and writers, long known as "The Usual Gang of Idiots," have brilliantly satirized politics, celebrities, sports, media, cultural trends, and more. Totally MAD (originally titled The New American Cookbook until cooler heads prevailed) is the ultimate collection of MAD's most idiotic material, including such classics as Spy vs. Spy, The MAD Fold-in, A MAD Look At..., The Lighter Side of, Horrifying Clichés and The Shadow Knows, plus modern MAD classics including The MAD Strip Club and The Fundalini Pages. Whether you grew up with MAD in the 50s, 60s, or 70s, reading it with a flashlight under the covers so your parents wouldn't catch you, or in the 80s, 90s and beyond, reading it while watching the MADtv sketch comedy show or the more recent animated series on the Cartoon Network, this book will bring back fond memories and also provide a great introduction to MAD for new readers. Then again, maybe not. SPECIAL BONUS! Includes "The Soul of MAD," 12 classic cover prints, ten featuring Alfred E. Neuman, MAD's gap-toothed grinning idiot mascot. These beautiful reproductions are suitable for framing or wrapping fish.

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.

'Buy the book; it's very entertaining.' David Aaronovitch, The Times A Financial Times, BBC History and Spectator Book of the Year On 8 June 218 AD, a fourteen-year-old Syrian boy, egged on by his grandmother, led an army to battle in a Roman civil war. Against all expectations, he was victorious. Varius Avitus Bassianus, known to the modern world as Heliogabalus, was proclaimed emperor. The next four years were to be the strangest in the history of the empire. Heliogabalus humiliated the prestigious Senators and threw extravagant dinner parties for lower-class friends. He ousted Jupiter from his summit among the gods and replaced him with Elagabal. He married a Vestal Virgin – twice. Rumours abounded that he was a prostitute. In the first biography of Heliogabalus in over half a century, Harry Sidebottom unveils the high drama of sex, religion, power and culture in Ancient Rome as we’ve never seen it before.

Mad Men Unbuttoned, footnotes to the show and the era, including these fascinating tidbits: Don Draper's character is based on the real-life Draper Daniels, protÉgÉ of Leo Burnett who started off as a copywriter and rose to creative director, eventually heading the team that launched the Marlboro Man. The iconic "Think Small" Volkswagen ad positioned the Beetle as an ugly but well-made car—a revolt against excess. Not only did unit sales top 500,000 cars a year, but the campaign succeeded in junking all the rules of car advertising. When barred from visiting Disneyland on a trip to the United States, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev threw a tantrum and left Los Angeles in a huff the very next day. The Group by Mary McCarthy, the novel Betty Draper is seen reading in the bathtub, transformed the way women viewed love, sex, and marriage. In 1947 Christian Dior showcased its revolutionary New Look line. Betty, Peggy, and the rest of the steno pool at Sterling-Cooper can be seen sporting the sloping shoulders, hourglass silhouettes, and billowing skirts of the New Look style.

DIVA thrilling and irreverent memoir about the transformation of the advertising business from the 1980s to today /divDIV/divDIVRichard Kirshenbaum was born to sell. Raised in a family of Long Island strivers, this future advertising titan was just a few years old when his grandfather first taught him that a Cadillac is more than a car, and that if you can’t have a Trinitron you might as well not watch TV. He had no connections when he came to Madison Avenue, but he possessed an outrageous sense of humor that would make him a millionaire./divDIV /divDIVIn 1987, at the age of twenty-six, Richard put his savings on the line to launch his own agency with partner Jonathan Bond, and within a year, had transformed it from a no-name firm into the go-to house for cutting-edge work. Kirshenbaum and Bond pioneered guerilla marketing by purchasing ad space on fruit, spray-painting slogans on the sidewalk, and hiring actors to order the Hennessy martini in nightclubs. They were the bad boys of Madison Avenue—a firm where a skateboarding employee once bowled over an important client—but backed up their madness with results./divDIV /divDIVPacked with business insight, marketing wisdom, and a cast of characters ranging from Princess Diana to Ed McMahon, this memoir is as bold, as breathtaking, and as delightful as Richard himself./div