Gary Wexler Collection

Gary Wexler (1951-) is an adjunct professor in the Masters program at the University of Southern California's (USC) Annenberg School of Communication, and also a consultant and a writer. Before this he worked for twenty years in major advertising agencies as a copywriter and creative director and then a further twenty years in the nonprofit/NGO world, where he worked with more than 1000 nonprofits and foundations globally .The collection consists of examples of some of the adverts that appeared in advertising campaigns that Wexler and his agency were involved in over a period of about twenty years, though the adverts in this collection are mainly from the 1990s and early 2000s. This period marked the beginning of the use of advertising and marketing by American Jewish non-profit organisations and the aim of the campaigns was to engage and involve affiliated and unaffiliated Jews in Jewish issues and the Jewish community. Some of the American clients that Wexler worked for were local organisations based in Los Angeles, others were national and based in New York or Washington D.C. Local organisations include The Jewish Federation of Los Angeles, Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles, and the UCLA Hillel. National organisations include Americans for Peace Now, New Israel Fund, Avi Chai Foundation, the Joint Distribution Committee, ORT and Women's American ORT, the Grinspoon Foundation and the Jewish Funders Network. The campaign adverts appeared in newspapers such as the NY Times, on billboards or often in the form of brochures that give details about the organisation and its projects and then include an appeal for funds. Most of the adverts are illustrated. Some of Wexler's clients were in Israel, such as Pardes and the Jerusalem Foundation. Also in the collection is a 97 page manuscript prepared by Wexler for presentation at the Coalition for the Advancement of Jewish Education conference about marketing Jewish education and two books containing examples of Wexler''s work from different campaigns. The collection was deposited in the National Library of Israel by Gary Wexler on June 2019. The material is arranged in files according to the names of the organisations who commissioned the adverts. Read more