The Man Who Sold America: The Amazing (but True!) Story of Albert D. Lasker and the Creation of the Advertising Century

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Hardcover: 480 pages
Publisher: Harvard Business Press (August 12, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1591393086
ISBN-13: 978-1591393085
Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.5 x 1.4 inches
Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

When Albert Lasker dove head first into the ad game in 1898, it was a field of circus buskers and snake oil salesmen. A consummate perfectionist, Lasker changed the game and established dozens of new concepts, including copywriting, keyed ads, market research, soap operas, boxtop premiums, establishing a "reason why" the consumer should buy, and "truth in advertising" (in order to sell a product as the "best," it truly has to be the best). Much like Mad Men's Donald Draper, Lasker was a genius at selling products, and Cruikshank and Schultz present him, warts and all, but don't limit their focus to Lasker's time in the game. Advertising was but the first of his many conquests. He used the skills he honed at Lord & Thomas in politics, shipping, baseball, social services, and even art collecting. Despite its title, The Man Who Sold America isn't about advertising; it's about how Albert Lasker created and applied industry methods to all facets of society, revealing the industry's amazingly insidious reach into the every day. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. From Booklist *Starred Review* No doubt, the overwhelming popularity of AMC’s Mad Men television series will spawn any number of biographies, memoirs, and just plain fiction about life in advertising land way back when. Few will equal this well-notated narrative of the beginnings of promotional selling, along with its first practitioner, Albert D. Lasker, founder of the Lord & Thomas agency (the predecessor of Foote, Cone & Belding and its heirs and successors). Think raisins, Lucky Strikes, Sunkist orange juice, even the state of California as nascent advertising accounts. Yet Lasker’s influence extended far beyond the miracle of his team’s copywriting and the discovery of trackable response. A man driven to succeed in fields of what he deemed “significance,” Lasker dabbled in politics (the campaign to elect President Harding), as a business owner (Van Camp packaging company and the Chicago Cubs, as two), and as a philanthropist. Yet this Texas-born, prone-to-depression entrepreneur was never quite convinced of the worth he brought to America nor of his enduring legacy. Writer Cruikshank (Murder at the B School, 2004, and others) and former advertising agency head Schultz help ensure, through copious research and easy-to-read prose, that Lasker will remain a critical linchpin in the U.S. that advertising helped build. --Barbara Jacobs The Man Who Sold America: The Amazing (but True!) Story of Albert D. Lasker and the Creation of the Advertising Century