Rothenberg - Where the suckers moon : the life and death of an advertising campaign

Where the Suckers Moon is entertaining and instructive a revealing job of reporting.

The New York Times

The great strength of Where the Suckers Moon is that it provides an authentically messy internal sense of how advertising is conducted.

Boston Globe

In his engaging deconstruction of the advertising business Rothenberg discovered the essence of Madison Avenue.

New York Observer

An interesting and illuminating narrative reveals the tense, funny and fun business of being creative, sometimes with more honesty than meets the eye.

The Nation

If the advertising executives who people this book could manufacture a campaign for it, they would trumpet: Riveting story! Vivid characters! Reads like a novel! But, unlike many of their ads, this one would be anchored in truth.

Ken Auletta, author of Three Blind Mice

The Neoliberals:
Creating the New American Politics

Where the Suckers Moon:
The Life and Death of an Advertising Campaign

Randall Rothenberg is the author of The Neoliberals: Creating the New American Politics. At The New York Times, Rothenberg was the science, politics, and food editor of the Sunday magazine until he left in 1991. Previously, he was a contributing editor at Esquire and wrote extensively for other national magazines. During the writing of this book, he served as a residential Fellow at the Freedom Forum Media Studies Center at Columbia University. He lives with his wife in New York City.

FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, NOVEMBER 1995

Copyright 1994, 1995 by Randall Rothenberg

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in somewhat different form by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, in 1994.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.: Excerpt from poem from the collection What Work Is by Philip Levine, copyright 1991 by Philip Levine. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

MAD Magazine: The MAD Madison Avenue Primer by Larry Siegel, copyright 1960 by E.C. Publications, Inc. Reprinted by permission of MAD Magazine.

Six Pictures Music: Excerpt from I Love L.A. by Randy Newman, copyright 1982 by Six Pictures Music. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Six Pictures Music.

Wylie, Aitken & Stone: Excerpt from Howl by Allen Ginsberg, copyright 1956, 1986 by Allen Ginsberg. Reprinted by permission of Wylie, Aitken & Stone.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Rothenberg, Randall.
Where the suckers moon: an advertising story / by Randall Rothenberg.1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
eISBN: 978-0-307-83354-9
1. AdvertisingUnited States. 2. Advertising campaignsUnited States. 3. Advertising agenciesUnited States. 4. Wieden & KennedyCase studies. 5. AdvertisingAutomobilesUnited StatesCase studies. 6. Subaru automobileCase studies.
I. Title.
HF5813.U6R57 1994
659.196292222dc20
94496

v3.1

For Susan Roy

Fortune swims, not with the main stream of letters, but in the shallows, where the suckers moon.

A. J. Liebling,
The Honest Rainmaker