Seminars and Teaching
Using MAD MEN in the Classroom
MAD MEN deals with men and women in 1960's advertising agencies (first it was Sterling Cooper, and now SCDP) on Madison Avenue. It includes the departments of Creative, Media, Account Management, Production, plus client relationships and new business. And much, much more.
In MAD MEN, they just had visuals and copy. There has to be an idea. A real message about the brand.
I speak as an advertising instructor, former account manager and client professional, with agencies reporting to me.
It’s been reported that enrolments in advertising related courses are up. In my classes for the past 35 years, I have waiting lists. Students have always been fascinated with marketing and advertising, and I prepare them for the “real-world” in whatever field they are going into. Last semester: I had journalism, advertising, electronic games, marketing, cinematic arts, Fine arts and other majors.
Agencies need a much wider skill set today, than when MAD MEN was happening. These MAD MEN stories happened a lot in the ’60s and ’70s. In the 80’s and 90’s advertising agencies stopped training people.
Today what we have to train people for is so much wider, broader than it used to be. The majority of the advertising is no longer traditional media. In MAD MEN‘s time it was TV, radio, print. The actual discipline of planning, thinking creatively and communicating with the target segments is the same. But now audiences are so fragmented. I still teach in the classroom: “It’s only creative, if it sells.”
Now you take a clear message and use new technology to highlight that message. There are a 20-year-olds who get hired now and may know more about technology than almost anyone in the agency.
Don Draper Persona, or About Don Draper:
- Played by Jon Hamm
- Signature Look: Always the right one for the occasion. And dressed for all occasions.
- Personality: Creative, aloof, elusive, enigmatic.
- The Secret: Well, his real name isn't Don Draper. It’s Dick Whitman.
- "Men are always between marriages," said a resigned Joan.
Inside Quotes of Don Draper:
“Fear stimulates my imagination.”
“Do you want women who want bikinis to buy your two piece? Or do you just wanna make sure women who want a two piece don't suddenly buy a bikini?”
“Advertising is based on one thing, happiness. And you know what happiness is? Happiness is the smell of a new car. It’s freedom from fear. It’s a billboard on the side of the road that screams reassurance that whatever you are doing is okay. You are okay.”
“You are the product. You are feeling something. That’s what sells. Not them. Not sex. They can’t do what we do and they hate us for it.”
Selling and pitching ads for Kodak Carrousel: “This device isn’t a spaceship. It’s a time machine. It goes backwards, and forwards…it takes us to a place where you ache to go again. It’s not called the wheel, it’s called the carrousel. It lets us travel the way a child travels – around and around, and back home again, to a place where we know we are loved.”
"Life is just a bowl of cereal."
"Clients' ideas should seem better than they usually do."
"Change is neither good nor bad, it simply is…if you don't like what's being said, change the conversation."
Trivia and Quiz
- Who said: “Fear stimulates my imagination.”
- What brand of cigarettes does Don smoke?
- Which of these characters has sex in the Sterling Cooper offices?
Pete Campbell
Harry Crane
Peggy Olson - Who said: “I feel like I should make a speech…get back to work.”
- What war did Don fight in?
- How is MAD MEN not like the “real world” of advertising?
- Who said "Dedicated to the men who still wear hats and the women that love them?"
- How has MAD MEN, the series on AMC, tied into present day culture and retail?
Answers:
- Don Draper
- Lucky Strike
- All of them.
- Roger Sterling
- Korean
- Stay tuned or ask me.
- Roger Sterling in the dedication of his book Sterling’s Gold, Wit & Wisdom of an Ad Man
- Mad Men has seemingly percolated into every corner of the popular culture:
- Sesame Street has created a MAD MEN parody.
- The clothing retailer Banana Republic created a nationwide window display campaign, and offers a style guide.
- The costume designer, Janie Bryant has collaborated with Nailtini on a MAD MEN–inspired line of nail polish colors.
- Mattel has released dolls based on the show’s characters.
- Brooks Brothers has produced a limited edition MAD MEN suit—which is, in turn, based on a Brooks Brothers design of the 1960s.
An Evening with Matthew Weiner and AMC's MAD MEN, part of USC’s CTCS-467: Television Symposium
DO YOU KNOW...
- Women bearing fewer children. How does this research affect marketing and advertising?
Get the answer!
“Luck is a dividend of sweat. The more you sweat, the luckier you get.”
— Ray Kroc, member, Advertising Hall of Fame
There are moments in history when the pace of change is so fast and the shape of the future so fuzzy that we live in a constant state of beta.
— Bruce Nussbaum in a speech at the Royal College of Art, London, 6/27/07
“Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.”
— Rudyard Kipling
Favorite Quotes from Mad Men
Greg: “I don’t want to have a fight.”
Joan: “Then stop talking.”
“Mr. Draper, I don’t know what it is you really believe in, but I do know what it feels like to be out of place, to be disconnected, to see the whole world laid out in front of you the way other people live it. There is something about you that tells me you know it, too.”
Peggy: “You [Don Draper] know something. We are all here because of you. All we want to do is please you.”
Jim: “My Lord. That question just tied a knot in my brain.”
Peggy: “It was going great until it wasn’t.”
Roger Sterling: “I feel like I should make a speech get back to work.”
Don seems lucid about the fakeness of the awards process; he acknowledges that it “doesn’t make the work any better.”
Roger: “Well, I gotta go learn a bunch of people’s names before I fire them.”
Headline: “Enjoy the best America has to offer.”
— Old Taylor 86 (1963)
“The philosophy behind much advertising is based on the old observation that every man is really two men - the man he is and the man he wants to be.”
— William Feather
Roger Sterling: “As I said, advertising’s been half my life and I’m probably off by 50 percent.”
“The day you sign a client is the day you start losing them.”
“Being with a client is like being in a marriage. Sometimes you get into it for the wrong reasons and eventually they hit you in the face.”
“Old business is old business.”
Londre Marketing Consultants, LLC | Expert Witness Credentials | Seminars and Teaching
Public Service & Awards | Stimulating Articles and Notes | Contact | Home
