Rich Mendoza

Rich Mendoza began his advertising life as a traffic manager/copy trainee on the American Airlines account at Doyle Dane Bernbach.He left DDB to become a copywriter and sometime radio producer for Blaine/Thompson, the venerable Broadway theatre ad agency. Among the accounts for which he wrote print, radio and TV ads were Grease, Master Harold and The Boys, Same Time Next Year, Hair, Amadeus, Avalon-Hill Games and the Star Wars Fan Club. He reported directly to Nancy Coyne and Matthew Serino who have gone on to create Serino/Coyne, the enormously successful entertainment agency.

From Blaine/Thompson he went to Grey Advertising as VP/Associate Music Director. During his tenure he wrote and produced musical campaigns for virtually all of Grey’s clients. Among the accounts on which he was most active were Canon Camera, Mitsubishi, Goodrich, Kool-Aid, Dannon Yogurt, Post Cereals, Dairy Queen, Slimfast, Hess, Kenner/Hasbro, and Ivory. His work won awards from virtually every major advertising award show.

He left Grey in 1999 to open the music and audio production company Amazing Tunes, whose client list includes the Muhammad Ali Center, Absolut Vodka, John Malkovich’s Mrs. Mudd clothing line, and the Port Authority of NY/NJ. The studios have recorded several audio books for Random House and Simon and Schuster, including the Grammy nominated “War Letters”.

In addition to advertising work, Rich is very active in the field of children’s television. He’s written songs for “Schoolhouse Rock” (ABC), “PB&J Otter” (Disney Channel), “The Book of Pooh” (Disney Channel) “The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss” (Nickelodeon), “Out of The Box” (Disney Channel), “Jammin’ Animals” (HBO Family),”JoJo’s Circus” (Disney Channel) and “Seemore’s Playhouse” (PBS).

His TV credits also include the theme song for the long-running PBS series “Matinee at The Bijou”. A sequel series of MATB has been greenlighted by PBS. Besides being involved in writing a new theme song for Debbie Reynolds, the host of the new series, he rejoins the show with Executive Producer status this time around. He is also blogmaster for The Bijou Blog, editing and designing the successful webzine.

His advertising and television work have given him the chance to work with the likes of Johnny Cash, The Muppets, Luther Vandross, John Malkovich, Elmer Bernstein, Mike Nichols, Barbara Mandrell, Rudy Vallee, Ivan Reitman, Cy Coleman, Marc Cohn, Southside Johnny, Leon Redbone, Kathy Lee Gifford, Loudon Wainwright III, Dr. John, Phoebe Snow, Ben E. King, John Sebastian, Paul Sorvino and Roger Miller.

He is a former part-time member of the faculty of The New School where he taught songwriting and jingle writing. He has also taught songwriting as a volunteer at Sing Sing Correction Facility in Ossining, NY, creating the songwriting program at the prison. His teaching and lecturing experience include numerous appearances as guest speaker at the Songwriters Guild Ask-A-Pro series.

He received a degree in theatre from Union College, and was a member of the BMI Musical Theatre Workshop studying with Lehman Engel.