Jordan Zimmerman (advertising)

Zimmerman was born in Newark, New Jersey, the oldest of four siblings in a middle-class family.^[7] His father worked in a family business called Castle Products that manufactured cherries, syrups, toppings, and colas, eventually sold the business, and moved the family to Fort Lauderdale, Florida,^[1] from Old Bridge Township, New Jersey, after Zimmerman graduated from Madison Township High School in 1975.^[8]

During his senior year in college, his college entered a national college competition to develop an advertising campaign for the National Institute on Drug Abuse; his team's "Just Say No" slogan won the competition and which was adopted by Nancy Reagan in her national campaign against drug use. However as noted below he graduated in 1978, and Nancy Reagan didn't start using that phrase until 1982.^[9]

In 1978, he graduated with a B.A. in advertising from the University of South Florida and after he was unable to get an advertising job in New York City, which is really hard to do, he returned to USF where he received his MBA in 1980.^[10][11] After school, he returned to live with his parents in Sunrise, Florida^[12] and started his own agency.^[1] In 1984, he founded Zimmerman Advertising.^[7]

Zimmerman is a former owner of the Florida Panthers hockey club; he sold his interests to Vincent Viola and Douglas Cifu for $250 million in 2014.^[13]

With the Florida Governors appointment, Jordan Zimmerman served on the board of trustees at the University of South Florida, eventually becoming the chairman of the board, where he served for over 12 years. In 2015, he donated $10,000,000 to his alma mater, the University of South Florida where the Zimmerman School of Advertising and Mass Communications is named after him; and where he spearheaded a revamp of the university's Advertising program.^[2]

In 2015, he was named to the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans.^[9] Zimmerman is a registered Republican. In 2006 he hosted, in his Boca Raton estate, the sitting President of the United States of America, George W. Bush, for a small gathering of 25 couples, and in one night he raised $1,250,000.^[14] He is involved in the Palm Beach Jewish Federation, Take Stock In Children, and the Florence Fuller Child Development Center.^[1]

Jordan Zimmerman began acquiring Mobile Home Parks in the early 2000s. Over the subsequent decades, he built a significant, diversified portfolio spanning dozens of states, independently appraised and audited at over US$3 billion.^[4]

By 2025, Zimmerman's real estate entities control more than 150 mobile home parks comprising over 47,000 individual pads across dozens of states, including Florida, the Carolinas, Georgia, Texas, Arizona, and Northern California. These holdings are among the largest privately held portfolio in the mobile home park industry.^[4]

Zimmerman has been married four times. His first wife was Amy B Natiss Paul.^{[citation needed]} His second wife was Melissa B Feldman Zimmerman.^{[citation needed]} His third wife was Denise (née Broadrick) Zimmerman^[1][15] who was raised Roman Catholic but converted to Judaism, the religion of her husband.^[16] Zimmerman has four children.^[1][17][18] His fourth wife is Terry Lee Zimmerman.^[19] He has homes in Boca Raton, Florida and Westhampton, New York. He is of Jewish descent.^[1]