Summary

Liar's PokermeetsThe Tipping PointmeetsMad Men-a hilarious, personal, and sneakily profound chronicle of the past, present, and future of the advertising business. Adlandis a book about advertising. Which is to say, it's a book about every issue and aspect of life on our morally conflicted, culturally challenged, ubiquitously branded planet. On one level it's the wickedly funny, compelling personal chronicle of the rise and fall of a modern-day ad man; a riveting insider's look at the astonishing transformation taking place in advertising's hottest idea factories; and an introduction to the people whose job is to know what makes us tick, what makes us lean in, what we think we need and don't know that we want. But take a step back from the tales of lavish shoots, agencies on the brink, and pampered mega-brands andAdlandbecomes much more: a snapshot of how we live our lives on this earth at this particular moment . . . thirty seconds at a time. Funny, profound, deeply thoughtful, and utterly unique, this book is both a wildly amusing ride in Adland, brilliantly recounted, and an exploration of the value of life in the information age.

Author Biography

James P. Othmer, advertising executive turned novelist, gives us a hilarious, personal, and sneakily profound chronicle of the past, present, and future of the advertising business.

It's Hard to See the writing on the Wall of a Cubicle
On Moral Advertising and Other Corporate Oxymorons	p. 3
The Death of Darrin Stephens	p. 6
One Huckster's Beginnings	p. 29
When Agencies Fall	p. 49
A Tale of Two Chickens	p. 84
The Healing Power of Yogurt	p. 114
From Russia with NanoabsorbersÖ	p. 123
At Large in Adland
Thoughts on Impressions	p. 139
The Opposite of Subliminal	p. 175
Zapping the Zeitgeist	p. 201
The Merchants of What's Next
In Search of Advertising's Future in Cannes	p. 219
Idea Factories	p. 237
Torched if They do, Torched If They Don't	p. 275
Reunion	p. 290
The Care and Feeding of the Next Great American Hucksters	p. 296
Afterword: Who Do I Think I Am?	p. 317
Acknowledgments	p. 321
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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Excerpts

On Moral Advertising and Other Corporate Oxymorons

Do you think it would be morally acceptable to work on a beer account? How about light beer? Or hard liquor? For instance, eighty proof sweet stuff with a cool name that goes down easy, especially for those, ahem, new to drinking. Would you sell it with humor? Sell it with sex? Does alcoholism run in your family? Would you sell it to a younger, potentially underage demographic by casting older people who look young? Would you target a minority? What if it ran only on late night cable channels?

What about tobacco? Would you make cigarette ads? Would you make cigarette ads if they had huge "YOU WILL DIE IF YOU SMOKE THESE!" warnings plastered across the bottom? Would you do antismoking ads paid for by big tobacco? Would you not under any circumstances do cigarette ads yet work for a company or holding company that makes hundreds of millions of dollars every year marketing cigarettes and selling them without communications restrictions to the third world? Does cancer run in your family?

Would you work on a military account? Would you if the assignment was to increase the number of eighteen-year-old recruits during an unpopular war? Does your 401(k) portfolio include any corporation or affiliate of a tobacco or defense contracting company?

Would you work on a political campaign if you believed in the candidate? Would you work on one if you didn't believe in the candidate, if, say, you are a Democrat and your boss (who you had thought was a Democrat) asks you off the record if you would like to fly to Maine to work on the campaign of a certain Republican presidential candidate? Would you play off the fears, anxieties, and prejudices of the public if it would sell your campaign and get you promoted?

Would you work on a fast food account? Fried chicken? How about fried chicken with gobs of sodium and preservatives but no trans fats and they list the calories on the bucket and they do a separate "Hey, kids, don't be a fatty!" campaign and put jungle gyms and salad bars at select locations? Does obesity run in your family? Diabetes? Coronary disease?

Would you sell sugary children's yogurt to moms as a healthy snack choice? Would you bypass the moms and go right at the kids with animated spots starring skateboarding alligators and surfing polar bears on Nickelodeon programming?

How about an oil company? Would you take a creative director's position running the account of one of the world's biggest petrochemical companies if it meant a raise and an expense account and an office with eleven more ceiling tiles than that of your nemesis? Would you sleep better at night if your first assignment for mega-oil company was to do a global ad campaign about all the wonderful things it is doing for the environment, even if the media buy for the campaign cost more than the sum total of all the wonderful things they are doing for the environment?

Would the fact that you drive a Prius and intend to switch to compact fluorescent bulbs in less visible parts of your house make doing potentially award winning work for the maker of an SUV that gets eleven miles per gallon easier to stomach?

How about a financial institution? Would you do ads for a bank encouraging people to refinance their homes even though you are a numbers-challenged liberal arts major with no house or savings of your own and if following your Live life to the fullest! financial credo might actually lead families to lose their homes and, by association, cause a national lending crisis and, by further association, a worldwide economic recession?

If you worked in advertising, do you know what you would and wouldn't do, what you could live with?

Would your "moral" choices vary depending upon your financial situation and/or your place in the creative pantheon of your current agency, that is, do you bend a bit more if you haven't sold a campaign in six months and yo

Excerpted from Adland: Searching for the Meaning of Life on a Branded Planet by James P. Othmer
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.