Advertising Revolutionary
The Life and Work of Tom Burrell
by Jason P. Chambers
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Pub Date 6 Feb 2024 | Archive Date 13 Jun 2024
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Description
Over a forty-year career, Chicagoan Tom Burrell changed the face of advertising and revolutionized the industry’s approach to African Americans as human beings and consumers. Jason P. Chambers offers a biography of the groundbreaking creator and entrepreneur that explores Burrell’s role in building brands like McDonald’s and Coca-Cola within a deeply felt vision of folding positive images of Black people into mainstream American life. While detailing Burrell’s successes, Chambers tells a parallel story of what Burrell tried to do that sheds light on the motivations of advertising creators who viewed their work as being about more than just selling. Chambers also highlights how Burrell used his entrepreneurial gifts to build an agency that opened the door for Black artists, copywriters, directors, and other professionals to earn livings, build careers, and become leaders within the industry.
Compelling and multidimensional, Advertising Revolutionary combines archival research and interviews with Burrell and his colleagues to provide a long overdue portrait of an advertising industry legend and his times.
Advance Praise
“OMG! Jason’s book educated me about Tom and his agency on things that I didn’t even know, and I worked there. However, there’s one thing I needed no education about: if not for Tom and Burrell Communications, I wouldn’t exist in the ad industry and neither would my company. Half of everything I learned about advertising, I learned from my time working at Burrell, and Jason’s book brought it all back to life in full, living, soulful color!”--Jimmy Smith, Chairman, CEO, and CCO of Amusement Park Entertainment
“Jason P. Chambers’s thoughtful and thorough biography of Tom Burrell makes an important contribution to African American business history.”--Robert E. Weems, Jr., author of The Merchant Prince of Black Chicago: Anthony Overton and the Building of a Financial Empire
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9780252087646 |
| PRICE | US$24.95 (USD) |
| PAGES | 256 |
Links
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
Willy M, Reviewer
Advertising Revolutionary looks at the career of the highly successful black advertising genius Tom Burrell. Chamers, the author, does a great job. There are some stories that if given well not only tell the life of a person and his work but show how society operates with all its tensions, hopes and fears. This book does well in all that as well as giving sound advice from the mouth of the genius, Burrell, about how to be successful in advertising.
To give a view of Burrell's work we have to see the idea of "Positive Realism". To portray black life in the USA as it is while seeing the positive that we find that is both resilient and joyful. Of course, the strategy begs the questions, what is positive and what is real. This is the essential story to the book, how Burrell skillfully dissects the ideas of his intended audience in what they considered a real representation of their life, and what they considered to be positive. I do not want to spoil the book, so I'll just say Burrell succeeds, and builds a very remarkable story in advertising history. I highly recommend this book.
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