Yes, slightly enlarged ego but fortunately big mind to go along with it. More than 30 years on Madison Avenue building brands and winning awards taught Mike a thing or two even if he was born in Toledo, Ohio.
Mike grew up in New Jersey, graduated from Syracuse University and after military service delivered traffic helicopter reports for three years for a New York radio station. He came down to earth and began his advertising career as a copywriter at the first public ad agency, Papert Koenig Lois.
Much of Mike’s career was spent at Young & Rubicam Advertising (26 years in total). He left for a while to spend three years as Chief Creative Officer at Ted Bates and then to BBDO as a top creative executive and member of the Board. He was part of the team that won the coveted Apple Computer account. Mike returned to Young & Rubicam and industry-leading direct marketing division Wunderman. As Chief Creative Officer Worldwide, he was also a member of the Young & Rubicam Partnership Board.
Mike is considered to be an innovative and influential executive in the advertising industry. At Y&R companies, Mike created the award winning 25-year television campaign, “I’m stuck on Band-Aid ’cause Band-Aid’s stuck on me”. He led the creation and production of the 10-year American Express Corporate Card campaign “To Your Success”.
During the late 70’s and 80’s, Mike created and supervised 1/3 of all Y&R’s creative accounts including Jell-O Pudding with Bill Cosby, Dr Pepper, KFC, Eastern Airlines (his client was former astronaut Frank Borman), Time Magazine, Met Life, Johnson & Johnson, US Army, General Foods, Cadbury, AT&T, the U.S. Postal Service, President’s Council on Physical Fitness & Sports (client was astronaut Jim Lovell) and others.
Mike created the first Earth Day campaign for then Mayor Lindsey and after the Gulf War the “Operation Welcome Home” campaign for a commission named by Mayor David Dinkins.
Mike has spoken at conferences in more than 40 countries traveling out of America over 200 times during his career. Some of his speaking titles: Credibility in Advertising, Product Positioning, Behavior Marketing, The New Digital World.
Becker and art director partners have won over a hundred awards at numerous advertising and marketing festivals including: Cannes Film Festival (Gold & Silver Lions), Clio Film Festival, Art Directors Show and many others.
In 1998, he formed beckercommunications to advise clients on marketing, advertising and public relations. Mike was instrumental in building the creative team for Bill Bradley for President.
Recently Becker has worked with medium size clients that range from a Napa Valley vineyard to a major flavors and fragrance firm, architects, lawyers, real estate, insurance, brokerage firms and luxury builder.
Mike’s team is small but very talented. Skim the bios of the team members. Past and current clients can be found on the this site.