Philip Bernard Dusenberry (April 28, 1936 – December 29, 2007) was anAmerican advertising executive for theBBDO advertising agency.
Dusenberry was born inBrooklyn,New York City in 1936, and attendedMidwood High School in Brooklyn and thenEmory & Henry College inVirginia.[1] He gained his first experience in advertising when he was working as a radio announcer, and was asked to fill in for the station's usual adcopywriter. He joined the New York advertising agencyBBDO in 1962 as a junior copywriter, and in 1980 he became the agency's executive creative director. When he retired in 2002, he was Chairman of BBDO North America.[2]
Dusenberry was well known for his work with one of his major clients, the soft drink giantPepsi. He devised the advertising slogan "The Choice of a New Generation", and was instrumental in casting celebrities in Pepsi's high-profile advertisements, includingLionel Richie,Don Johnson,Madonna andMichael J. Fox. Dusenberry was overseeing the production of an infamous Pepsi commercial starringMichael Jackson in which Jackson's hair accidentally caught fire when a smoke effect misfired.[2] Dusenberry referred to the incident in the title of his 2005 book,Then We Set His Hair on Fire: Insights and Accidents from a Hall of Fame Career in Advertising (ISBN 1591840821).
Dusenberry also dabbled in the film business, co-writing with Roger Towne the script for the baseball movieThe Natural which starredRobert Redford.[2]
In 1984, Dusenberry wrote and directed documentaries for then PresidentRonald Reagan and First LadyNancy Reagan. The films aired on national television and used the line'It's Morning Again in America'.
In 2002, he retired as chairman of BBDO, and was inducted into theAmerican Advertising Federation Hall of Fame.
He died oflung cancer at hisManhattan home on December 29, 2007.
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