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Under the Radar: Talking to Today's Cynical Consumer
Jonathan Bond and Richard Kirshenbaum
A late-1990s manifesto on advertising to a public that has learned to tune advertising out. Jonathan Bond and Richard Kirshenbaum, founders of the scrappy New York agency Kirshenbaum Bond, argue that the modern consumer is media-saturated and skeptical, and that traditional interruptive pitches no longer work. Their answer is to reach people "under the radar" — through stealth placements, word of mouth, unconventional media, and messaging that respects the audience's intelligence rather than shouting at it. Brisk, anecdote-driven, and self-assured, the book reads as both strategy guide and highlight reel from a hot boutique agency. It anticipated much of what became guerrilla and viral marketing in the internet age. Marketers, ad students, and anyone curious about how persuasion adapts to consumer cynicism will find it a sharp, dated-but-prescient period piece.
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The authors
Jonathan Bond and Richard Kirshenbaum founded Kirshenbaum Bond & Partners in 1987 and built it into a prominent New York agency known for irreverent, attention-getting campaigns for clients such as Target and Moët. Kirshenbaum went on to a further career as an agency executive and author; both were cast, in trade-press lore, as the "bad boys" of 1980s–90s advertising.
The book
Under the Radar, published by Wiley in 1997, argues that saturation and skepticism have broken the old interruptive model of advertising, and it prescribes stealthier, more respectful tactics — buzz, unconventional media, and placement that slips past the consumer's defenses.
How it has aged
Its diagnosis proved durable: the "cynical consumer" and the turn toward word-of-mouth prefigured guerrilla, influencer, and viral marketing. Its examples are firmly of the pre-social-media 1990s, and some "stealth" tactics it praises would now raise disclosure and ethics concerns. Read it as an early, clear-eyed map of where persuasion was heading.
For more context
Pair with later accounts of viral and influencer marketing to see which of its predictions came true.
Sources
- Type
- Book
- Author / Maker
- Jonathan Bond and Richard Kirshenbaum
- Publisher
- John Wiley & Sons
- Place of publication
- New York
- Year
- 1997
- ISBN
- None
- Shelf
- Reference
- Location
- Colorado