User:BobbyZarem

Bobby Zarem is the publicist and architect of countless media campaigns from New York to Hollywood and around the globe. After living and working in New York City for 51 years, he has moved back to his beloved hometown of Savannah, Georgia.

Zarem is possibly best known for creating the “I Love NY” campaign, the most successful and iconic endeavor in public relations history. In his storied career, which spanned the Golden Age of Hollywood to the rise of the internet, he represented countless talents of stage, screen and song, along the way befriending Kirk Douglas, Jack Nicholson, Diana Ross, Michael Caine, Al Pacino, Mick Jagger, Catherine Denueve, Jane Fonda, James Franco, Audrey Hepburn, Lauren Bacall and Gregory Peck. In 1976, Zarem was dubbed “Superflack” by the New York Times and Newsweek following a soul food supper for Stevie Wonder at the Del Monoco Hotel’s ballroom.

His talents turned films such as “Pumping Iron,” “Saturday Night Fever,” “Scarface,” “Rambo,” “Dances With Wolves,” “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure” and “China Syndrome” into cultural phenomena and his scope of influential friends and press people helped bring about innumerable creative connections over the decades, including, while representing Fox Studios, orchestrating a piece in the New York Times which brought together George Lucas and “Starwars” with studio producers. Zarem, ever the taste-maker, gave one of the most unique and talked-about parties in New York City history – a black-tie event in the 56th street subway following the release of the movie “Tommy” – and oversaw The Hard Rock Café’s rise to international renown. Even Donald Trump said, in 1978, that Bobby was responsible for every cent he made due to the “I Love NY” campaign tripling Manhattan property values in six months.

Bobby’s influence also encompassed the world of politics, having worked intimately with the Clintons and, notably, saving Jimmy Carter’s Presidential campaign by stopping, with Jody Powers, Jack Anderson from going on Good Morning America with false rumors close to the end of the 1976 election. A deep love for Savannah was a constant theme throughout his life, as he made “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” into an international best-seller, co-founded the Free Southern Theater – for which he got Ava Gardner to chair a historic dinner in the ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria – and developed the Savannah Film Festival into one of the top five film festivals in the Western Hemisphere, according to the LA Times, and   where, in 2013, received a lifetime achievement award in the same theater where he watched movies as a boy.

In his youth, Bobby would hand-write letters to his favorite Hollywood stars – a talent for which he would later become famous – and was the batboy at Savannah’s Grayson Stadium in exhibition games for Jackie Robinson and Ted Williams. His love for baseball and sport grew throughout his years, and was proud to call greats Keith Hernandez, Tom Glavine, Rodger Clemens, Ryan Sandberg, Andy Van Slyke and Will Clark close friends.

A graduate of Andover Prep School and Yale, a veteran of the Air National Guard and unparalleled pioneer in the field of public relations, Bobby Zarem has six nieces and nephews and many dear friends around the world.