Madison Avenue

American  

noun

1. a street in New York City that is a center of the advertising and public relations industries and that has become a symbol of their attitudes, methods, and practices.

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Madison Avenue British  

noun

1. a street in New York City: a centre of American advertising and public-relations firms and a symbol of their attitudes and methods

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Madison Avenue Cultural  

1. A street in Manhattan on which many advertising and public relations firms have offices.

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“Madison Avenue hype” carries the connotation of misrepresentation or deliberate dishonesty.

The name of the street is often used to refer to the high-pressure techniques of the advertising business.

Example Sentences

The earlier commencement of the holiday retail season, commonly referred to as “Christmas creep,” has long influenced Madison Avenue’s holiday ad strategies.

From The Wall Street Journal

Philip Barber, a former playwright involved in public relations, met the former fashion journalist Stephanie Frey when she joined his Madison Avenue firm.

From The Wall Street Journal

Sotheby’s has coped by making dramatic moves, including cutting a deal with an Abu Dhabi wealth fund for a nearly $1 billion infusion and moving its New York flagship from a nondescript building near Manhattan’s East River to the Breuer on a chic Madison Avenue block near boutiques, galleries and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

From The Wall Street Journal

“It is just fascinating. And to denude it, to sanitize it, to make it kind of a Madison Avenue thing — already our revolution, because it’s there are no photographs, there’s no newsreel, has been sort of sentimentalized. It’s easier to do that. If it’s just a painting, it can’t be that violent.”

From Salon

The people rising out of the hole in the ground on the northeast corner of Madison Avenue and Forty-seventh Street at 6:40 in the morning revealed a great deal about themselves, if you knew what to look for.

From Literature