Joyce Beber

Joyce Beber, born Joyce Sacks, (November 20, 1929 – September 17, 2010) was an advertising executive who co-founded the Beber Silverstein Group and created a number of campaigns for the Helmsley group of hotels. The campaigns promoted Leona Helmsley and her hotel chain; Beber was hired and fired four times by Helmsley.

Career Born in Brooklyn, Sacks attended yeshiva prior to moving to Manhattan. She earned her bachelor's degree from Purdue University, and received a master's degree in journalism from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. While working in social services at New York City's Mount Sinai Hospital, Sacks met her husband to be, Charles Beber, an intern then who became a gerontologist. They married in 1956, and moved to Miami two years later. Beber used the conversation as the impetus to develop a campaign for Helmsley that featured her as "Queen of the Palace", carefully watching over every detail at the Harley Hotel in Manhattan. Occupancy shot up from 25% to 87% after just four months, and the campaign was recognized by Adweek magazine as opening "a new chapter in U.S. hotel advertising". A 1985 article in the Chicago Tribune credited the ad campaign with having "made Leona Helmsley more famous than the Helmsley hotel chain for which she speaks". Helmsley fired Beber four different times: once, in order to handle advertising internally; again, after Beber added Donald Trump as a client; next, when she blamed Beber's ad campaign for raising her profile leading to her tax evasion conviction; finally, when Helmsley found out that a man to whom Beber had introduced her (and in whom Helmsley had been romantically interested) turned out to be gay. After one of the firings in 1990, Helmsley told an interviewer for Playboy, "You could say I gave her the royal flush". When the firm was rehired after Helmsley's income tax evasion conviction, Beber developed the slogan "Say what you will, she runs a helluva hotel." Beber's other daughter, Neena, is a playwright.

Death Beber suffered a stroke in 2003, and died in Miami at age 80 on September 17, 2010, of leukemia. She was survived by her husband, two daughters and four grandchildren. Her daughter Jennifer joined the firm in 1988, later becoming its president.