Hasta La Ideas

High-flying advertising executive turned author James Othmer‘s new book, Adland: Searching for Life on a Branded Planet (Doubleday), offers an inside look at the past, present, and future of the ad industry. His tales of the wild and morally questionable ride from the days of Mad Men to branded iPhone apps have proved to be a hit with readers, and AgencySpy editor Mathew van Hoven recently caught up with Othmer for an illuminating chat. In addition to revealing that he parted ways with one of his first literary agents when she quit to enroll in clown school, Othmer offers this tantalizing synopsis of his next book, a novel called Holy Water that will be out in June from Doubleday:

It’s about a water-filtration salesman who gets transferred to a third-world nation to open up a back office in a drought-plagued nation. His wife has thrown him out of the house because he lied about his vasectomy. It’s one of those books. But he’s vice president of Underarms and Sweat at a P&G Colgate-like multinational. It’s this kind of droning job. It touches upon globalization, consumerism, ‘What are we doing with our lives?’

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