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The first time I watched Mad Men I was in grad school, basically as far away from the world of advertising as you could get (or so we told ourselves). Ever since I started working at a marketing agency five years ago, I’ve been wondering if a rewatch would hit different. It does, mainly in scuffing up even the surface-level glamorousness. In my first days on the job an exec stomped over to our section to proclaim, “You all think you’re Don Draper, but you’re not. You’re HARRY.” This tracks — media means internet rather than TV now, but the media guy is congenitally uncool. That said, the bloom is off the rose for the creative genius as well. Any time I hear from the creative side, I brace myself for some random, unprovable generalization about “what people want.” My job makes me Dr. Greta, a humorless uncreative whose reams of data get swept into the trash on a creative whim. It hurts because it’s a bunch of Paul Kinseys doing the sweeping! On a personal level, it seems absurd to be taking job advice from a ten-year-old episode about sixty-year-old history, but Peggy’s arc is hitting me kinda hard. I’ve definitely learned the hard way that copying my white middle-aged Midwestern boss/mentor is not always a winning strategy for a millennial POC woman. Lately, I’ve sort of capped out here, and I know I should be looking, but I don’t really want to, but I know I have to… Peggy by the elevator is 2022 goals. This is entirely too much identification/projection for a TV show. I’ll chalk it up to Jerusalem’s insightful recaps that draw out the universality of the show’s themes from the specificity of the characters’ experiences. Thanks for a great thread!
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Nov 29, 2021 09:19
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 04:27 |
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I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the extent to which the show captured the industry — not just the flashy period details but mundane inter-agency politicking and client relations stuff. Random advertising observations: - Big agencies do always win. Huge corporations hire huge corporations… no surprise. Every now and then you get “edgier” clients signing on with seemingly staid agencies like mine for the perceived credibility, e.g. cannabis companies, a certain beleaguered vape company, etc., but never the other way around. It’s basically impossible to imagine a scrappy independent agency like SCDP working its way up to winning a car company today… my company has a bunch, and wins more car business because it has more car business. - This is because industry is dominated by just five holding companies that own hundreds of agencies each. In this day and age, McCann and SC would just be two separate agencies belonging to IPG. - Which makes the idea that “clients come and clients go” that much more true. Clients will absolutely put out RFPs for strategic reasons (like the AA plot line). It’s not really treated as a big deal to lose a client because it’s musical chairs with not that many chairs. I’ve been here long enough to see us win, lose, and re-win the same client. - To expand a bit on my Dr. Greta comment — the fundamental conflict between Don and Research persists as there’s a push to make advertising more “data-driven,” forcing creatives and data people like me into an uneasy alliance. I’d say both sides still hold the same suspicions of the other: statistical commodification versus emotional superstition, but more lip service is paid now. - I’ve actually written a bit of the voiceover for a pitch, explaining the target consumer. The conventional approach is still (a pale imitation of) Don-like language playing on hopes and fears, but the vast majority of any pitch these days is focused on metrics and costs. The days of winning off a beautiful story are long gone. - Little lifestyle holdovers: one of the agencies has a semi-hidden “speakeasy” with $1 drinks. The creative agencies still have nicer, trendier offices. At my orientation, we were told not to drink a certain kind of soda in the office in case our own soda client visited. One of the few perks in the office is $.25 soda machines (client brand only, of course). - Recently I was shocked to discover one of our creative agencies still has a tobacco client. Their work mostly goes into magazines and events. We were asked to identify tobacco consumers of “any brand, but excluding menthol,” which… we all know what that means. Guess Pete is still forward-thinking even today.
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Nov 29, 2021 12:38
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