About the Book
70 Ads to Save the World: An Illustrated Memoir of Social Changeoffers a detailed and entertaining account of the groundbreaking work of advertising visionary, Jerry Mander.
Chronicling his evolution from corporate advertising to non-profit and political advertising work, Mander takes readers on a journey through the origin stories of some of the most memorable anti-establishment campaigns from the second half of the 20th century.Many of Mander's ads and campaigns for environmental and social justice issues were not only memorable decades ago, they remain relevant today.
As Mander explains in this book, he wrote several ads in the 1980s focused on abortion and reproductive rights for Planned Parenthood, and his team at Public Media Center took aim at the National Rifle Association in support of gun control. In 1966, Mander wrote an ad calling out the absurdity of a then newly-announced Pentagon initiative to drop toys over Vietnam, which resulted in a visit from the FBI.
A trailblazer in the pre-internet age, Mander's strategies included bold calls to action. In work for the Sierra Club, for example, Mander helped produce print ads that featured letters to legislators readers could clip out and mail, a tactic at the time more commonly reserved for retail coupons.
Throughout70 Ads to Save the World, Mander explains how these campaigns came to be and offers advice for fellow low-budget, high-impact do-gooders. A personal accounting of his own work gives readers a primer on innovative thinking, while illuminating his inspiring story of aligning personal vision with collective impact.
About the Author :
Jerry Mander is the founder, former director, and distinguished fellow of the International Forum on Globalization (IFG), a San Francisco-based think tank focused on exposing the negative impacts of economic globalization, and the need for economic transitions toward sustainable local economies. In addition to his role at IFG, Mander is the former program director for the Foundation for Deep Ecology, and founder and director of the Public Media Center. In the 1960s Mander served as president of a major San Francisco advertising company before turning his talents to environmental campaigns that kept dams out of the Grand Canyon, established Redwood National Park, and stopped production of the Supersonic Transport. He has authored, edited and co-edited many books including The Capitalism Papers; Fatal Flaws of an Obsolete System (2013), Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television (1977), In the Absence of the Sacred (1991), The Case Against the Global Economy with Edward Goldsmith (1996), Alternatives to Economic Globalization: A Better World is Possible (2004), Paradigm Wars, Indigenous Peoples’ Resistance to Globalization, and 70 Ads to Save the World: An Illustrated Memoir of Social Change (2022). Carrie Pilto is an independent art historian and curator based in Amsterdam. Before moving to Amsterdam, Pilto served as director of Musée Matisse in Le Cateau-Cambrésis, France, project assistant curator at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and managing editor of Point d’ironie editions in Paris. She obtained her masters degree in Art History from the University of Paris-IV, La Sorbonne. Her recent exhibition projects and book contributions include: Curator, Values: Investing in the 21st Century, Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam (forthcoming February 2023); Contributing author, The Museum of Mistakes, Patrick Frey, Zurich (2020); Editor and contributing author, Living with Matisse, Picasso, Christo..., Teto Ahrenberg and His Collections, Thames & Hudson (2018), Arvinius + Orfeus Publishing, Stockholm (2018), Flammarion, Paris (2019); Curator and co-editor, Enrico Baj: Play as Protest, Cobra Museum of Modern Art, Amstelveen (2017.)
Review :
An activist surveys socially conscious advertising strategies as he melds an illustrated memoir with advice and critiques of runaway capitalism and environmental damage.
With hundreds of millions of dollars spent daily on razzle-dazzle advertising, “corporate or commercial interests dominate mass-media, ‘free-speech’ ad expressions in the US,” notes career adman Mander (The Capitalism Papers, 2012, etc.).
Despite titans like the Jolly Green Giant and the Geico Gecko, this book argues, noncorporate campaigners operating on “exquisitely small budgets” have produced ads that have had “startling success” in public engagement. Many were one-offs with short newspaper runs that maximized their efficacy through a careful blending of jarring headlines and images with informational text.
As the co-founder of the United States’ first nonprofit ad agency, Public Interest Communications, and a lifelong environmentalist and critic of capitalism, Mander is perhaps the nation’s most experienced activist advertiser. He devotes significant attention to his own years in the profession, which included antisemitic experiences such as being told by a Park Avenue ad agency in 1959: “Your hair is too kinky; try Seventh Avenue.” That initial brush with the discrimination in the industry began the yearslong transformation of an Ivy League business school graduate “from Adman to Anti-Adman,” which led to his co-founding of PIC.
A skilled writer, Mander gives engaging behind-the-scenes looks into the opposite worlds of advertising and nonprofits, describing the backstories of effective ads for groups such as the Sierra Club, Planned Parenthood, and Friends of the Earth. Yet the undisputed stars of this book are the socially conscious advertisements themselves, which are reprinted in full-page, high-quality images and deal with topics from animal rights and the environment to gun control. Indigenous voices and perspectives, also heard in Mander’s previous books, are highlighted in critiques of environmental degradation and unfettered capitalism. The book ends with tips (“Secrets of Success”) for activists and nonprofits on how to create high-impact advertisements on a limited budget, though it leaves you wondering how the book’s print-centric approach applies to social media.
A beautifully designed history of iconic nonprofit advertisements.
-- Starred Kirkus Review
