Mad Men Musings: Bad memories

Poor Don Draper! Fresh off a wildly successful presentation that landed Kodak as a client — leaving the execs slack-jawed in amazement at his spiel about their slide wheel as a “carousel” that reveals all that is truly important to us in life — Don goes home to find his family has left for Thanksgiving vacation without him. For a moment, he apparently envisioned arriving just in time to make up for his previously dickish behavior by joining them for a journey to the in-laws’ … but no. They’re gone, and all he can do is sit alone on the stairs, perhaps reflecting on the fact that his bullshit has gotten so good that evidently even he believes it. Or he did. For a minute.

It’s been a while since I’ve mused on Mad Men — and I’m pretty sure that I actually missed at least one episode, as the last few weeks have been a little hectic — but I have continued to ponder the show. In fact, I even decided to read Madison Avenue USA, a book about the ad business published in the late 1950s, to get a better sense of the ad world of those days was viewed in real time.

The author, Martin Mayer, was clearly sympathetic toward the business, but seemed fairly even handed as far as I can tell. One of his primary themes was the degree to which ad men at the time were trying to be accepted as respectable professionals. I think this theme exists in Mad Men as well, but tends to get lost in characterizations of the series as supposedly capturing a time when commercial persuaders were all-powerful, didn’t have to work hard, and made a ton of money.

To the contrary, Meyer’s book suggests that ad types did work hard back then. And while advertising paid well at the time, it pays well now, too. Then and now, clients were lost, campaigns failed, and clever plans turned out not to be so clever after all. (Mayer has a pretty upbeat chapter about the careful strategizing on behalf of the Edsel — as good an example as you could ask for that the ad industry’s power over consumers always had limits.)

One thing that’s kind of amusing to read in Madison Avenue USA is the emphasis on the research and “science” of advertising that some agencies seemed to go on about. Mayer is rather skeptical about much of it, but the rhetoric actually fits well with the theme that what really motived many ad pros was trying attain some version of the respectability that other professions (doctors, lawyers, etc) enjoyed. And Mayer is blunt about what the overriding problem was: “There seems to be only one civilized cultural opinion on advertising and most of its work: A rousing, roaring thumbs down.”

Hey, that sounds like today! Ah well. Yes, yes, the world has changed quite a bit since the era in which Mad Men is set. But if it’s really true, as a recent Ad Age editorial suggested, that there old-timers who pine for the days depicted the series, I have a feeling these guys must be letting a certain amount of wishful thinking cloud their nostalgia. They need to snap out of that fantastic daydream and look around and realize — like that poor fellow who calls himself Don Draper, an identity founded on spun stories and a denied past — that believing your own bullshit is rarely a good idea.

[Earlier Mad Men Musings are here]