Brooklyn’s Charlie Moss dies at 85, helped create popular ‘I Love NY’ ad campaign

August 19, 2024 Brooklyn Eagle Staff

A maintenance crew from the Office of General Services cleans the I Love New York sign at the state Capitol on June 20, 2023. AP Photo/Hans Pennink

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Brooklyn-born Charlie Moss whose successful ad campaigns to promote New York became household jingles, died in early August, New York Times obituary writer Sam Roberts reported on Friday.

Born Charles Moskowitz in an undisclosed Brooklyn neighborhood, on Sept. 7, 1938, he moved with his family to New Jersey, then later attended the Lodge Professional Children’s School in Manhattan and graduated from Ithaca College.

At the time of his death, he resided in Wainscott, in Suffolk County. During New York’s 1970s financial crisis, Moss was the advertising executive credited with the “I Love NY” tourism campaign that was the fruit of group collaboration.

The designer of that logo, Milton Glaser, died in 2020, according to a Times obituary. The “I Love NY” logo gained instant recognition and was credited with a boost in tourism that helped turn around the city’s revenue. Moss also is credited with creating Alka-Seltzer’s popular “Plop, plop, fizz, fizz,” jingle and the “Flick your Bic” slogan for Bic lighters.

Moss won a special Tony Award for the campaign, which featured exuberant television commercials starring the cast of “A Chorus Line,” and other Broadway shows.

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