Description
The ad man who saw through it all. James P. Othmer’s Adland (2009) is the memoir of a Madison Avenue star who walked away: years selling the dream, then the hilarious, searching account of what the dream cost — and what he found instead when he stopped selling and started asking.
Othmer writes with insider wit about the industry’s beautiful absurdity: the pitches, the clients, the existential 3 a.m.s. Part memoir, part industry exposé, part self-help for sellouts — it is Mad Men with the author as both Don Draper and the conscience, and funnier than either.
Funny, smart, and sneakily profound. For advertising folks and everyone who has ever wondered about the man behind the curtain — and what he thinks about now. Othmer’s farewell to Madison Avenue is funny, honest, and quietly wise: the perfect book for anyone who’s ever sold their soul — or thought about buying it back.
What happens when the man who sells the dream starts questioning it? James P. Othmer spent years as a successful advertising executive before trading the boardroom for the writer’s desk — and Adland, published in 2009, is the hilarious, personal, and sneakily profound chronicle of what he found in the mirror.
Part memoir, part industry exposé, the book traces the rise and fall of a modern-day adman: the pitch meetings and creative triumphs, the global travel and late-night epiphanies, and the growing suspicion that a life spent selling things might be missing something essential. Through chapters with titles like “At Large in Adland” and “Zapping the Zeitgeist,” Othmer takes readers from Madison Avenue to Tokyo and beyond, asking what brands promise us — and what they can never deliver.
Witty, candid, and unexpectedly moving, Adland is more than a book about advertising. It is about the search for meaning on a branded planet: how we define success, what we choose to believe, and whether it is possible to sell for a living without selling your soul.
A must-read for marketers, creatives, and anyone who has ever wondered who is really being sold to.
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