Bronze Seeks Silver: Lessons from a Creative Career in Marketing

“Every entry on a résumé has a lesson,” writes Zucker in his debut, an upbeat memoir of his career in advertising. In 1992, he turned down his first job offer, from Antiques magazine, because the magazine “wasn’t cool.” He went on to learn the ropes at FCB, an ad agency where his youthful enthusiasm clashed with reality—his work on an egg-replacer ad, he learned from a superior, was “not delicious.” Zucker writes of the years he spent at ad house Ogilvy, where he rose from freelancer to associate creative director before being laid off in 2012. Though he sets out to “punctuate each period of [his] career with at least one solid lesson,” his advice only comes in the last few pages of the book: he encourages readers to innovate and to “learn from others and pass it on.” Still, readers get to see how the sausage is made as Zucker counters glamorous notions of the advertising world (“What you probably don’t immediately think of are twenty-foot Christmas displays at strip mall liquor stores”). Those looking for an insider’s take on the advertising world will find much to appreciate. (Self-published.)