Madboy: Beyond Mad Men: Tales from the Mad, Mad World of Advertising - Paperback

by Richard Kirshenbaum (Author), Jerry Della Femina (Foreword by)

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.

Author Biography

Richard Kirshenbaum is co-chairman of Kirshenbaum Bond & Partners, one of the largest creative advertising agencies in the country, and the author, with Jonathan Bond, of Under the Radar. Richard and his wife, Dana, married ten years ago and have a son and two daughters.