Regarding “Mad Men”

The most enjoyable moment in the debut episode of Mad Men was — of course — the scene in which the advertising agency protagonists meet with their big tobacco-company client. It’s 1960, and becoming clear that tobacco companies aren’t going to be able use the rational-sounding sales pitches about how cigarettes are somehow good for you. Everyone’s has read in Reader’s Digest that the data just don’t back this up. What to do?

The meeting seems to be in a tailspin when Don, the slick-hair, gray-suit, main character of the show, asks the crusty old Southern tobacco magnate how his cigarettes are made. He latches onto a word in the man’s matter-of-fact description: Toasted. He writes it on a chalkboard: Lucky Strikes tobacco — It’s Toasted.

But, the magnate says, every brand is toasted. Then it sinks in. Here is what can replace the rational pitch — the meaningless pitch. Just put the phrase out there, and let the consumer fill in the blanks. Toasted? That sounds good. Must be good. Must be a point of differentiation — and a damn good one — if they mention it in their advertising.

None of this is spelled out, of course. But it’s a fair summation of a broad-brush shift that makes advertising today so different than it was in earlier eras.

Look at old magazines and they’re full of ads dense with copy, making the comprehensive case for this line of suits or that brand of soap. Needless to say, a lot of the argument was hooey. Now look at a contemporary magazine — there’s not much copy at all, just a lush photograph of a sexy person, and a the name of some fashion brand or household product. You can’t call that argument hooey, because it isn’t an argument. The pitch is almost entirely in the mind of the consumer.

I’ve been looking forward to Mad Men quite a bit. And I have to admit that, overall, I actually thought the episode was pretty disappointing. The characters seem a little too familiar, the plot-arc setups a little too obvious. (Ah, so here is the Dreiser-ish quasi-innocent young woman who’s a little too anxious to be defiled by the icky young rogue! Etc.) But it’s too soon to say. In a way, reviewing the first episode of a TV series like this one is like reviewing the first chapter of a novel. Presumably, we’ll get a fuller picture of what the creators are up to over time.

The show has been positioned — or has been interpreted — as being about the bygone days when advertising agencies were all-powerful. In this instance, they will keep Americans smoking no matter what Reader’s Digest has to say, because they swinger a bigger stick than science and the media combined. This implies, of course, a gullible public, easily manipulated (no Internet access to save them!) by clever bad guys who knew they were lying and enjoyed doing it. I have no idea what the show’s real motives are on this score. If it ends up pandering to the audience by presenting 1960 as an era of venal stupidity, unlike our own supposedly enlightened times, I’ll be disappointed.

But this is the other reason I liked that meeting with the tobacco client. Even within the context of the somewhat ham-handed first episode, the all-powerful and evil manipulator theory is obviously incomplete. Yes, the admen are peddling tobacco and working to gloss over negative facts about the stuff. But the important point is that as they do so — they’re all smoking like fiends themselves.

What’s that about? If these amoral persuasion wizards are smart enough to hoodwink the public into doing something they personally know is bad, then why aren’t they smart enough to avoid doing it themselves?

This gets at something that’s probably been true of commercial persuaders from P.T. Barnum to the present moment: The game is not brainwashing people, but rather in providing them with rationales. It’s not about fooling people, it’s about letting people fool themselves. Sometimes the less you say, the better — “It’s toasted” — because we’ll make a stronger case to ourselves than any cleverly written ad copy ever could.

As Barnum knew, most of us are quite good at fooling ourselves. Even ad professionals. Or maybe — could it be? — especially ad professionals.