A thrilling and irreverent memoir about the transformation of the
advertising business from the 1980s to today
Richard 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. In 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. Packed 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.
