Where the Suckers Moon

The most incisive, informative and fascinating behind-the-scenes portrait we have yet had of modern advertising — the $120 billion industry that strives to shape our perceptions of the world around us.

From the moment Subaru of America — in an effort to counter flagging car sales - set out to select a new agency, throwing its $75 million account open to competition, Randall Rothenberg, formerly advertising columnist of the New York Times, was there. Out of his unprecedented access to the car company and the agency it ultimately chose — Wieden & Kennedy — Rothenberg brilliantly details the people, passions, politics and processes of advertising. He takes us into a world composed equally of chaos and comedy, terror and triumph, a world where sober M.B.A.'s clash with Hollywood egos, creative mavericks with research pundits — all of them in pursuit of the Holy Grail: an image that will live as long as Volkswagen's "Lemon" ad, a slogan as memorable as "Please don't squeeze the Charmin.".

In a narrative alive with authenticity and genuine color, Rothenberg takes us inside Subaru — the darling of Wall Street in the early eighties but ravaged in the recession of the early nineties. He enters as well the inner sanctums of the six major agencies that competed to top Subaru's once-successful slogan, "Inexpensive, and built to stay that way." He watches and listens as the Subaru executives argue about the proposals submitted. And once the winning agency is chosen, he describes every crucial twist and turn of its frenetic, all-out efforts to invent and then recharge a campaign - TV commercials, print ads, slogans - that will win the approval of Subaru executives and disgruntled car dealers.

Along the way, we visit American advertising's wild past and wilder present; we meet the postmodern aesthetes who teamed Spike Lee and Michael Jordan to sell sneakera, the fierce adman who wrote "Us Tareyton smokers would rather fight than switch", the director of Pepsi-Cola's Michael Jackson extravaganzas and a host of others.

We see the ad game as its players experience it. Rothenberg has given us an unforgettable , lightning-speed joy ride on America's highway of hype — Madison Avenue — whose own peculiar culture has for so long helped mold our own.

• Part I: The Mission
1. Where's the Beef?
2. I'm Not a Doctor, but I Play One on TV
3. The Closer He Gets, the Better You Look
• Part II: The Company
4. Cheap and Ugly
5. Inexpensive, and Built to Stay That Way
6. We Built Our Reputation by Building Better Cars
• Part III: The Pitch
7. When You're Having More Than One
8. Four Out of Five Dentists Recommend…
9. The Real Thing
10. It's the Right Thing to Do
11. The Quicker Picker-Upper
• Part IV: The Production
12. Somewhere West of Laramie
13. Just Do It
14. Come Alive
15. Perception/Reality
16. You Get a Lot to Like
• Part V: The Campaign
17. It Keeps Going…. and Going...
18. All Aspirin Is Alike
19. If It's Out There, It's In Here
20. We Are Driven
• Part VI: The Image
21. I Think in My Legacy
22. Have It Your Way
• Part VII: The Consumer
23. We Do It All for You
• Epilogue

Funny book about the advertising and consulting business in the US.