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Who

Kirshenbaum is the founder and co-chair of ad agency Kirshenbaum Bond + Partners. He's the guy to blame for introducing the world to Wendy the Snapple Lady.

Backstory

Syracuse grad Kirshenbaum started his ad career working at Korey, Kay & Partners before joining David Deutsch Associates, the agency that Deutsch's son, Donny, later took over. In 1987, at just 26, Kirshenbaum teamed up with Jon Bond to form a new agency with a single client under their belt, Kenneth Cole. Thanks to a series of ballsy ads for Cole, which poked fun at disgraced financier Ivan Boesky, Ronald Reagan, and Imelda Marcos, Kirshenbaum Bond + Partners became the "It" agency of the 1990s and turned the partners' 1997 book, Under the Radar, into an industry must-read. The heat has cooled quite a bit in the last decade—Bond and Kirshenbaum sold a majority stake to upstart Canadian holding company MDC in 2004—but the agency still works with clients like Mohegan Sun and Target, and pioneers the occasional buzzworthy guerrilla campaign. In a viral campaign for USA Network's miniseries about the drug trade, Traffic, the firm placed stickers on thousands of dollar bills that were released into general circulation. Kirshenbaum was also responsible for the Hennessy Martini campaign in which paid actors acted out skits involving the drink inside New York nightclubs.

In print

In addition to Under the Radar, Kirshenbaum co-authored a 2006 book called Closing the Deal: Two Married Guys Reveal the Dirty Truth to Getting Your Man to Commit, in which he and co-author Daniel Rosenberg tutor women on how get their men to pop the question. Unfortunately, the book's big blurb from Hilary Swank—"I don't know how I closed the deal without Closing the Deal!"—came months before she split with her husband.

Personal

A social fixture in Manhattan and the Hamptons, the ad man is married to Dana Kirshenbaum, a former publicist. They have three children: Lucas, Thalia and Georgia Rose. In addition to an apartment on Fifth Avenue, the couple own a four-bedroom home in Wainscott.

No joke

Kirshenbaum helped Bruce Willis prepare for his role as an advertising executive in 2007's Perfect Stranger. In return for his help, Willis namedropped Kirshenbaum's company in the film.