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Founders: #206 Albert D. Lasker (the creation of the advertising industry)

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What I learned from reading The Man Who Sold America: The Amazing (but True!) Story of Albert D. Lasker and the Creation of the Advertising Century by Jeffrey L. Cruikshank and Arthur W. Schultz. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ----Advertising is a very simple thing. I can give it to you in three words: Salesmanship in print.Before he arrived on the scene, advertising agencies were mostly brokers of space in newspapers and magazines. With Lasker's prodding, the industry became a creative force and began earning substantial commissions.His rare ability to put troubled geniuses to work on challenging problems grew in part from the fact that he himself had been driven by "a thousand devils.”Albert measured himself against the man who had braved the privations and horrors of the Civil War, epidemics, and hurricanes and made several fortunes in a foreign and sometimes hostile land.Thomas was often taken aback by his young colleague's unconventional views and methods.He decided that he could represent as

[00:00:00] Who was this Albert Lasker, whose energy and imagination ran in so many directions at once, and who was, in his own words, driven by a thousand devils? His friends considered him charming, brilliant, thrilling, and exhausting. His subordinates admired him enormously, and dreaded his arrival at the office and the tumult that inevitably ensued. Clients quickly learned that there was no such thing as a half embrace of or by Albert Lasker. He pursued life with a fervor that offended and alienated many people. A lot of people can't stand me, he once admitted, because they think I'm too…

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