Steven Grasse of Gyro Worldwide is a skilled self-promoter, and I say that with all sincerity, for self-promotion is a necessary skill that’s hard to master. Too much self-promo and you’re tiresome. Not enough, and you don’t exist. Like a soufflé, you have to get it just right.
With the help of Harriet Bernard-Levy, a celebrated French cultural theorist, Grasse is getting it right. For what agency head doesn’t want a French intellectual poking through his old campaigns and family albums?
According to the publisher, Bernard-Levy’s new book, Virus: The Outrageous History of Gyro Worldwide, “frames the Gyro story as a business epic, the tale of an unknown Philadelphia ad agency that taught the world to “sell out” and, in so doing, laid the foundation of America’s cultural and economic hegemony for the 21st century.”
In the book, Bernard-Levy claims Gyro invented viral marketing, while also launching careers of such notables as Spike Jonze, Doug Aitken, Quentin Tarantino and Dayton and Ferris. Hmmm…there’s likely some truth in these claims, but I can certainly see why the word “outrageous” is in the title of the book.
