Before there was the hit TV show “Mad Men,” before Coca Cola was ‘the real thing,’ before branding became a marketing buzzword, there was Phil “Deals” Geier. The story of how this visionary, who created the modern advertising holding company and brought The Interpublic Group from $500 million to $5.6 billion in revenues, is shared for the first time in SURVIVE TO THRIVE: Sustaining Yourself, Your Brand, and Your Business from Recession to Recovery.

In addition to sound business wisdom, SURVIVE TO THRIVE reveals an insider’s take on the glamorous real world of 1960s and 70s advertising and features a veritable “who’s who” of mid-20th century luminaries.

Part business bible, part advertising history and part personal memoir, Geier tells all and doesn’t flinch as he recounts his career, pointing out mistakes as well as triumphs and sharing the takeaway lessons that led to his success and that of many others on both the agency and client side. As the man who created the blueprint of the global network, Geier was named Chairman and CEO of Interpublic, the parent company of his original firm of McCann-Erickson, by the time he was 45. During his 20 years with the company, Interpublic stock experienced a compound growth of 22 percent.

Geier’s saga of the advertising industry’s evolution to meet the challenges of modern globalization provides some deep insight into dealing with change, revealing how his relentless focus on the client’s concerns changed the model of the effective account person.

“To succeed in business,” he writes, “you need to be able to use your own personal strengths in a wide variety of situations. You need to be able to listen as well as to make yourself heard. You need to earn people’s trust. You need to be able to make the right impression on people in a way that is always true to yourself.” At the core, Geier says “success is all about people.”