Indian Summer- Lucky Strike

Roger appears to be in a decent mood all things considering, when everyone comes out to say hi he even jokes for them to get back to work

Lucky strike is concerned about Roger being gone and not involved in their campaign so Pete arranges them to have a New York style delicatessen lunch. Pastrami, sour pickles, and coke cola

They have just finished up a law suit, blame is one thing, and mallis is another. Lee Garner Sr. worked his way around Washington buying dinners trying to make things easier on himself

Roger, as a shareholder, called the Surgeon General’s office and they said it would be at least 3 years before they can file a report, warning signs on packages.

Plenty of time to worry so we’ll wait to see if share drops off before we think about a new campaign.

Lee Garner Sr. says he’s glad they came by because he missed everyone. You New Yorkers: said in his southern accent, of course making them seem so glamorous. Then Roger drops down with coronary number 2. Not so glamorous.

This is the beginning of the big time Don, Garner Sr. says that him and his board all like Don Draper, but you should try and show him you like him too. Half the accounts here came for Draper.

Poor Roger... I guess this is what happens when you have to put on a healthy show when you really aren't up to it.

It's a Mad Christmas!

In an effort to keep my holiday as full of Mad Men as possible, I kept my menu very 60's. My family and I decided to have a rib roast that I cooked per Julia Child's instructions for rotisserie chicken wrapped in bacon.

I know what you must be thinking, chicken and beef are completely different! Well friends, no matter whats in the oven, the bacon fat still baste the meat the entire time it's cooking.

I asked my grandmother to borrow her rotisserie oven and thinking she'd give me the one I've seen her use, I thought, piece of cake!

Well as if the woman read my mind, she instead let me borrow her rotisserie oven that she got as a wedding present in 1951! After giving it a little TLC and plugging it in to be sure it worked, I was in business!

I tried to keep my best Julia Child voice up for most of the day, and my family thought it was hilarious. I also got a Mad Men instrumental music cd for Christmas so that was of course playing throughout the day.

The meat came out great and when I took it out and was cutting the strings I kept waiting for Don to say snarkly "it's just us tonight".

Here's a picture of the oven with the roast slowly turning away! Happy Holiday's everyone!

Long Weekend- Menkens

The campaign designed for Menken’s is more of a store redesign versus’ an advertising campaign. Paul gives the pitch, wider aisles to show off the Chrome display cases, elegant tea room, modern classic signs, and champagne linens. All of this sounds really great, but it doesn’t strike me.

Mr. Menken we meet here and he seems to be willing to do the changes but not without wiggling his foot around (like he’s going to place it firmly down, what a bluffer!).

He never signed up to be in the restaurant business and now 30% of his ground floor is devoted to it. 3 months of construction while we build enormous anticipation. Like a movie premier. The new Menken’s, you will have a line on that first day; even if you have to pay people to stand in it.

He makes it known that he’s not against change but drawing attention to Rachel, sitting next to him cowardly, which is very unlike her(this shy, cowardly creature becomes apparent again later in the episode)

Can’t I keep what I have and just build on it? The unpleasant truth is Menken’s is nothing, your customers can’t be dependent on. Over the years people have developed new taste. They are like your daughter, educated, sophisticated; they know full well what they deserve and are willing to pay for it.

Why would I want to own a store I don’t want to shop it?

Un-fitting to the role of dutiful daughter she is currently playing, Rachel makes a comment about how her father actually started with nothing and their stores story isn’t just some PR effort to run in their 4^th of July circular.

Then she begs the question,” How many of you can say that?” the shot stays on her and her father and nobody says a word. Could it be foreshadowing? Could it be that Rachel stuck with Don throughout seasons 2 and 3?

Another client from this episode that I don't feel is deserving of a post is Dr.Scholls- because they lost them.

Does anyone out there in blog world think that perhaps by the end of season 3 with the impending sale of Sterling Cooper that Don did think of Rachel's comment?

Long Weekend- Nixon

The entire view of Nixon throught Sterling Cooper's eyes is like one big, months long pitch. They fight for him and do everything they can as an agency(but not his agency) to make him look better.

The president is a product, the Kennedy ad is multi shots around Kennedys issue points with a constant jingle in a very annoying voice, Nixon has a single shot of himself, medium shot just staring at you, he discusses his issues but its so boring.

The first thing you learn in any video production or scriptwriting class is that the key to success is short shots. If the shots are short they keep the viewer interested, if they are long its awkward for the viewer and they turn away.

Nixon’s campaign is very much a PR effort versus an advertising effort. The Sterling Cooper gang says it shouldn't have been this close, but Nixon brought this close campaign on to themselves.

Every time these men discuss Nixon something more important seems to be on the horizon. The Nixon guys don’t want to run with an agency but SC is doing nothing to fight their case. In this case they decide to leave it as it until after the long weekend

In this same episode, Kennedy begins running an anti-Nixon campaign, featuring the president hat Nixon was VP for, he is asked to give an example of when Nixon thought of an idea that he implemented” the President responds ”give me a week and maybe I’ll think of one.

The Hobo Code- Belle Jolie

“My Momma always said that life is like a horseshoe, its fat in the middle, open on both ends and hard all the way through.” –as much as I hate to say this, since it’s a quote from Don’s step-mother who seems kind of like she was mean to him, but this is really insightful!

It’s a big day for Peggy and Pete, both as individuals and as with each other. Pete’s moving and Peggy’s copy is being pitches to Belle Jolie.

The idea that Peggy pitched during brainstorming has formed into an actual campaign and it’s time for the boys to pitch it to the client.

From a basket of kisses she picks one, it makes her unique, it colors her kiss and her kiss colors her name.

The big guys only see one color in the drawing (good to see they have eyes) and he gets defensive that women want colors: lots and lots of colors. He’s not considering that most women pick a shade or two of lip stick and stick to it. We can’t all pull off hot pink and fire engine red.

Ken tries to back up Don and Freddy but Don doesn’t need any help. “You’ve already tried your plan and your number 4, you’ve enlisted my expertise and your rejected it to keep on going the way you have been.”

Is this campaign going to refocus the core of their business? Are women still going to want lipstick when the ads are speaking directly to them? Belle Jolie is not thinking like a woman, and Sterling Cooper wouldn’t be either if Peggy hadn’t actually come up with this.

A sentence or two later they realize that the creative team is right. It’s time for change.

Season 5 pregnancy predictions

I don’t think it’s reaching too far to think that maybe Suzanne Farrell got pregnant with Don’s baby. I could totally see Sally's former teach having had a baby, but based on the time between season 3 and 4 the baby would probably be at least 2 by now. So why now? Why not come to Don after he left her in the car all night? I think it’s very possible that she just could have had too much pride.

I think an even better unexpected pregnancy story would be to revisit Peggy and Pete's child; maybe the adoptive parents died and have no family so the baby is given back to her. Imagine all of the awesome drama that would cause for everyone!  

Pete and Trudy now have a child of their own, when he had to pay to keep SCDP afloat she was very mother lion about providing a more than adequate life for their daughter. I would like to think Trudy would be pleased with another child around, she was after all the one pushing to adopt a child, so wouldn’t she love any child she got to raise?

Trudy was forgiving when Pete admitted his indiscretion with the German nanny but I think if she found out he created a love child with a secretary on the night of his bachelor party, she wouldn’t be so forgiving. In s1.e1 Pete had to promise to let her look under his fingernails after the bachelor party just to stop her nagging.

People automatically think Greg will die because he's going to Vietnam but I think it would be a great twist if they killed off another useless spouse- Jane. With Jane dead, Greg and Joan get a divorce because she’s pregnant with Roger's baby and then Roger can be with Joan. They don't seem like that great of a couple in the present time but in the flashback and in season 1 they just seemed so right together.

For more predictions go watch this awesome video!

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2009/08/let_harry_crane_not_spoil_mad.html

And for a look into the "10th season" of Mad Men, go see this video!
http://www.babelgum.com/6001229

Shoot- The episode with no clients!

Kennedy starts airing a commercial in Spanish and the guys think that maybe if Kennedy gets a little more popular Nixon will want them.

Other than that the only pitching going on is from McCann to Don. Jim Hobart goes so far as to offer Betty a modeling job to try and woo Don.

I guess some could say that Don also pitches to Betty that she’s a good mother. She lies to him about the coke-cola work even though he already knows that they weren’t going to keep her on.

The day after Don keeps telling Betty how great she is and how no one is a better mother to her children than her and that she doesn't have to work. She seems to feel good for a while, but she barely makes it until lunch time without feeling restless. She makes breakfast, she does laundry and she shoots the neighbors birds.

In true white trash fashion with a cigarette falling out of her mouth and hot pink nail polish.

Red in the Face- Nixon

The Nixon people come and Roger throws up on them. How much worse could it have gone!

The agency has been vying for Nixon’s attention since episode 2(ladies room). They are chasing him even though Roger put it oh so eloquently that “why chase a girl who doesn’t want to get caught?”

Instead of this episode being all about the client it is all about Don feeling superior to Roger. Roger is inappropriate with Betty and Don feels the need to show him that he is nothing.

Don arranges with the elevator operator to have it be “out of service” when they get back from their Roger Sterling diet lunch. Don feels the need to make Roger feel like an old man. Roger isn’t getting any younger but he doesn’t need to act like a little kid. Roger is running around like a kid on the playground taking everyone else’s toys.

Babylon- Belle Jolie

The pitch to Belle Jolie might not have happened in this episode but Peggy and the other secretaries laid down the framework for what would become a great pitch.

The creators of Belle Jolie have so many options for woman that they even have a color called Ethel Rosenberg Pink(where it to the chair). This makes me think of The Bell Jar, the very first page is about them. “It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenberg’s, and I didn’t know what I was going in New York.” It’s a bit of a stretch going from Mad Men to The Bell Bar but they both are taking place around the same time and in the same place.

So back to Mad Men! The research provided to try and help with the campaign is as follows “Lipstick was invented to simulate the flush on a woman’s face after you’ve treated her right.” So what are the copy writers supposed to do with that? This would only help if they were trying to sell lipstick to men (maybe it did work and that’s where cross dressers come from!)

Freddy doesn’t speak moron (apparently being a woman makes you a moron in 1960) so him and Ken decide to “throw it to the chickens”, aka the secretaries.

All the secretaries make their way into a room with one way glass during their lunch break and are told to “grab a lipstick and a mirror and be your pretty little selves.”

The men are fascinated with what Peggy is doing, or more accurately what she’s not doing. Freddy approaches her later on. She didn’t get the color she liked, someone took her color, she’s very particular (as opposed to the other girls), Peggy doesn’t think anyone wants to be one of 100 colors in a box.

The way Peggy stood out to Freddy “was like watching a dog play the piano.”

Babylon- Olympic Cruise Lines

Olympic wants Israel to be a destination spot, like Paris or Rome. Don of course is prepared, Paris has the Effiel tower, Rome has the Colosseum. Olympic is charting their most luxurious liner along the ports of the Israeli Riviera, but all that will mean nothing if they continue to blow up hotels.

Olympic wants to be perceived as luxury and glamour, which is why they came to Sterling Cooper, but as Don pointed out, they are viewed by the public as dangerous. What Don should have pointed out is that no one wants to take a luxurious cruise along the Berlin Wall of through Auschwitz.

Olympic cruise lines are working with Israel to promote tourism to Israel which will in turn drive sales for Olympic. These people view Sterling Cooper as a glamorous agency; they don’t let them down when they provide caviar bilinis and mai-tais for the meeting.

America has a love affair with Israel and Olympic wants to bring the two parties together. Sal suggests they use an average family of 4, parting of the red sea with a 5 star hotel waiting on the other side. But Don and Olympic want to keep religion out of it.

Exodus will begin filming soon with Paul Newman. So they want to play up that.

Don needs inspiration, so he meets with ‘his favorite Jew’, even Rachel Menken wants to see this movie now that she knows Paul Newman will be in it. She finds it strange that he’s treating her like an expert in Israel, “I’m American and not very Jewish” she says proud yet timidly.

Jews have lived in exile for a long time, first in Babylon, and then all over the world, Shanghai, Brooklyn, we’ve managed to make a go of it.  Maybe it has something to do with the fact that we thrive at doing business with people who hate us.

I’ll visit, but I won’t live there, for me it’s more of an idea than a place.

DING DING DING Mr. Draper “utopia” the good place, and the place that cannot be.

Of course this is a double meaning for the relationship that they both want as well as about Israel.

 

Your favorite....

Episode of Mad Men-
Child-
Client-
Mistress of Don-

My favorite episode is a question that I can't even answer. If there was a gun to my head(Couples Retreat style) I would choose the season finale of season 2 and 3(I'm sorry I can't pick just one!). Betty finding out shes pregnant, Peggy admitting she was pregant to Pete, Sterling Cooper being sold, and Don finnally coming back from California really just made a fantastic episode. But at the same time, the finale of season 3 when  that song("Shahdaroba" - Roy Orbison) is playing as Don is walking into his new life and new apartment- I almost want to cry at how good that scene was.

My favorite child of the show is Sally Draper. When she has her own story lines they are great and when she's just there she's great! In season 2 when she was watching Don shave and all she said was "I won't talk so you don't get cut", that line made the episode! Who cares about Bobbie Barret, Don may have told her not to talk but it's not until Sally says that line that what he said to Bobbie really makes sense to me. He just wants all his women to shut up! But little Sally is going to make it known that she plans on shutting up before she actually does it.

My favorite client is Topaz pantyhose. Peggy took the inicitive to not only get them signed as a client but she also did the creative work. I think that I like them the best because they were open to a woman signing them on and to her doing the creative. I like open minded people.

My Favorite mistress of Don's was Rachel Menken. They had a lot in common and I think they complimented each other well. They are both such hard working individuals that I think they really could have made a real relationship work, especially since they would both be so busy working, by the time they see each other it would be like a treat!

So people out there reading, tell me your favorites! If I get enough answers I'm going to make some charts!

5G- Liberty Capital

Liberty capital savings: The Sterling Cooper gang is trying to come up with a great campaign for banking, banking products are not sexy and they don’t really ever change. Most banks try to drive business by offering a free toaster. Other than a few working girls, women aren’t in charge of the banking.

The man from Liberty says that most men already have their statements sent to the office. Of course Don would be the one to come up with the idea, he must be doing it. Later on in the episode Betty has her first meeting with Peggy and when Don gets home she talks about how a woman has to remark on her husband’s secretary, she says this as if she has some say in the matter.

It’s obvious Don doesn’t care for Betty in the way a husband should, but this episode with his idea for Liberty Capital and her comment about Peggy really put their relationship into perspective.

Later on in that episode Don gives all his savings to Adam and as soon as he gets home Betty wants to buy a summer home and he said we’re not that flush right now, clearly she has no idea what money is being brought in by him.

The men of the 1960’s had many needs; they need special banking to organize their life. The bank man replies with the simple line, “better than a calendar.” Maybe what these men actually need is a calendar, so they will remember that they are getting their portraits taken and not put their secretaries in awkward positions.

Current advertising trends

The fast paced world of advertising is moving full steam ahead into new technology. With the invention of google people can search for products and have millions of answers within 3.2 seconds. Google is very good at keeping up with the changing world.

Being able to find multiple links for a product can either be either a good step or a bad step in the marketing world. It’s good if you have a good product or a good website because then there will be nothing to hold the customer back from purchasing your product. But if you don’t have a website or the product has had a few problems it makes it that much easier for a negative image to grow.

This balancing act between good and bad creates a sticky situation for advertising. If people are saying bad things about your product on a blog that's seem by millions do you justify them and come out with a “we know so and so said this but..” or do you let it be? Or what if you are getting positive feedback from search engines, do you pull from other media?  Whatever happened to the standard format ad!

Podcast are an emerging medium that has almost no down side. Most of them are free (awesome!), there are many available on Itunes and they get the point across wonderfully. If you already have videos they could be used as audio only and put on Itunes. In that case it’s a medium that already exist so even if only one person listens to it on Itunes that’s one person who learned for little effort.

Podcast are a great newer medium that is often overlooked. If iTunes paid a little more attention to podcast instead of movie rentals maybe the world of podcast would be the best new way to advertise. I think that within the next few years that’s something that should be worked on: making podcast seem cooler than movie rentals.

New Amsterdam- Bethlehem Steel

In this episode The Bethlehem Steel story line brings about an important life issue. Everyone takes for granted what they have. This episode puts Pete and Don’s rivalry into a whole new light. Pete and his wife just bought a new apartment, that they didn’t even have to pay for and he’s not happy. He wants his wife, his free apartment, to be an account executive, and to be a copy writer.

Bethlehem Steel- We take for granted what we have, buildings are made of steel, it’s not something that you can work around. Once an architect decides that a building will be X height, using steel is the only option. Don wants to use full page ads in targeted markets, newspapers, trade publications throw in a few billboards so their employees can brag to their girlfriends. The idea, the sentiment, you feel like you already know it you just haven’t thought of it lately… cities are made of steel- Bethlehem steel. 

The idea is well thought, the person seeing the ads will feel like they are tailored for them. But the executive has other ideas: “your making our company look like a middle man for another product.” He has a point too, what if people view the ad’s as more of a travel incentive instead of an ad for the raw materials.

Don makes the border-line rude comment, "Would you rather a beam on a plate with a slab of butter on it?" Not only has Pete not prepared this client to like his idea, but this was what the client asked for just three months ago! Steel is not something you can buy at the supermarket, the campaign can not be designed as if its a loaf of bread.

Later that night, after Pete and Trudy are handed $30,000 with a silver spoon, Don is at home pondering how to change this ad without changing his vision. While Don is busy trying to salvage the client relationship as well as his creative ideas, Pete is out on the town with Walt pitching his own agenda.

Pete over-steps and pitches copy while out with Walt. He does this after his in-laws offer him and Trudy the money for their new apartment. In order to feel like a man in his life he has to make Don feel like a child.

Don changes the ad to, New York, oh little town of Bethlehem. It achieves the same goal but the word play makes it more about Bethlehem. From the acorn that is Bethlehem Steel come’s America’s great cities. But now Walt is only interested in Pete’s backbone idea. No matter what Don pitches to this man, it’s not going to matter anymore because Pete has readied him for an idea that isn’t being presented to him.

In the end the ad ends up being "Bethlehem Steel, the backbone of America". Thanks I guess Mr.Campbell...

Mad's men come full circle

I decided to re-watch Mad Men from the beginning just to see some things I might not have picked up on. By the time I finished episode one I noticed something very interesting that I wanted to share.

Don goes over to Midges because he's really nervous about Lucky Strike, and he says something along the lines of "I'm washed up, all the young execs are going to come like vultures and pick my bones".... In season four Roger has a flash back of when he met Don, and he later said almost the same exact thing to Joan(his own mistress) about Don being one of those young vultures.

This revelation brought me to the conclusion that the men on the show are all slowly turning into each other:

Don's marrying a younger, brunette, secretary just like Roger did. Let's take a minute to remember the rift between Don and Roger, Don was not trying to hide how angry he was over Roger marrying his secretary.

Roger got Joan pregnant, he's married and shes leaving him completely in the dark about it. This is similar to what happened between Pete and Peggy. Peggy had no idea that she was pregant so of course she kept it from Pete, but she also waits all of season two before telling him what she did about the baby. Joan was seen on the phone with Greg saying shes pregnant with his baby so I assume shes going to keep up the rouse to Roger, who thinks she's had an abortion anyway.

Ken Cosgrove is marrying a woman whose father has money and could be a client just like Pete did. In Season One Ken actually says I have to get married when Pete lands his father in laws account. Yet in season four he won't even consider talking to his. He says something along the lines of this is work, she's my life. I think they could be the couple of the show that doesn't cheat on each other.

Harry was unfaithful to Jennifer in season one but they worked it out and had a baby. But from the way Harry was looking at the model in the season four finale he was acting like every other married man on the show. More of a Roger though because they were both so keen on being faithful, Harry after his one night stand with Hildy and Roger once he was married to Jane, yet season four brings them both back to their old philandering ways.

Even Henry Francis seems to be slowly becoming more and more like Don. One of my professors said it best, "Henry is interesting because you could argue that Betty is turning Henry into Don --- although Henry was a Don-in-training when he first appeared, pursuing Betty."

Even the new character of Danny (Jane’s cousin) reminds me of Ken when the creative team threw him on the desk and sprayed him with Right Guard in season one. No one takes him seriously.

I also notcied that after Sal and Joan kiss during the election party she looks at him confused. I don't think Don was the first one in the office to be aware of Sal's homosexuality after all. I think Joan knew all along.

Marriage of Figaro- Menkens

Menken’s- The research team only looked at the competitors (Henri Bendel, Saks, Bonwit Teller), not the store they are working for. When Rachel asked if they've even been to the store, they all lied. Only two of the stores they researched even exist still today, obviously they didn't work as well as they assumed, because they no longer exist.

The men of Sterling Cooper come up with the following ideas: Less is more, one sweater per window, take the heads off the mannequin. They tell her to get a personal shopping service and designer collections… but Menken’s already has those.

When Don is there he notices that the store is very crowded, but it's because of a sale currently going on. "If we’re successful you’re going to lose the customers that are here now."

Don promises to fix the problem personally and visit the store that afternoon. When Don later goes there to see what’s actually going on Rachel gives him cuff links. 

Everything Rachel said to him about her childhood and her life, stuck with Don. He went to pick up Sallu's birthday cake and just decided to not come back. He went and got Sally a puppy, because according to Rachel Menken, :For a little girl, a dog can be all you need."

Marriage of Figaro- Volkswagen

Although Volkswagen is not a client of Sterling Cooper, they spend a piece of his episode discussing their ads.

The team for Secor Laxitives has nothing complete, to turn Don's attention away from their lack of preperation they discuss VW. "We can be funny, like those Volkswagen people. They must be getting results, they keep going back to the well. Love it or hate it, we’ve been talking about it for the last 15 minutes"

According to one my favorite books,

“How marvelous to have actually been there when DDB art director Helmut Krone laid out one of the very first Volkswagen ads. A black-and -white picture of that simple car, no women draped over the fender, no mansion in the background. A one-word headline: Lemon… "

"Remember DDB first did this when other car companies are running headlines like: Blue ribbon beauty that’s stealing the thunder from the high priced cars... Volkswagen’s was a totally new voice.”

I came across a Volkswagen ad in a current magazine this morning that caught my attention as well. It said "Front row for the price of nose bleed". I take it as a vote of confidence toward my hopefully future profession that a company that has been successfully creating humorous, catchy ad's from the 60's- still is!

Ladies Room- Right Guard

As if we were'nt already aware that the 60's were a time of a change, this episode brings space to the viewers attention. It would be another 8 years before Neil Armstrong  made his voyage to the moon, but space was on the public's mind.

Right Guard- The creative team immediately gets the impression of a rocket when they see the Right Guard spray deodorant and they stick to that theme throughout the creative process.

In keeping with the episodes space theme, Sally Draper and Ernie Hansen are seen playing spaceman; she has a dry cleaning bag over her, pretending it’s a space suit.

Paul’s pitch to Don seems well thought and fresh, the aerosol can is nothing less than space age, its steel it has exhaust. It’s even shaped like a rocket engineering marvel. There’s a picture of an astronaut and the headline reads: Right guard, it works in my suit, or yours.

But Don draws on an important fact, some people are upset by the future, some people see a rocket, they start building a bomb shelter. Who is this moron flying around space? He pees in his pants. Little does Mr. Draper know that his own daughter is fascinated by said man who pees in his pants.

In the end, this product is all about the person who is going to buy it, not the person who will use it. Women do the shopping, the copy needs to be brought down to earth, they want a cowboy, quiet and strong, who always brings the cattle home safe, some sort of mysterious wish that we’re ignoring

It’s ironic that this pitch is all about the future, because its also all about the past. The character of Don Draper is based on Draper Daniels(the creative head of Leo Burnett) Chicago in the 1950’s) who created the original cowboy that became so famous… he created the Marlboro Man.

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes- Menkens

Menken's- Don is beyond rude to Rachel Menken the first time they meet. Rachel Menken is a woman on a mission, she wants to succeed in the business world, eventually find a love, and be a man. Yes that’s right; I said she wants to be a man.

When Don first walks into the meeting with Rachel Menken he reaches out to shake the hand of the man standing next to her. He assumes that this Jewish looking man is the owner of the department store. I would love to know what Rachel was thinking as this was happening... Especially because unbeknownst to Don, Roger had introduced that Jewish man to her as "David Cohen from the art department". To make Rachel feel like she was among her own people, Roger pulled David from the mail-room.

His first insult to her is followed by a witty remark, "You were expecting me to be a man, my father was too"

She seems to be making the most of this potentially uncomfortable situation, but its short lived.
Don, Roger, and Pete explain the strategy they have come up with for her store and she is by no means impressed. "We share a wall with Tiffany’s, honestly a coupon?" "Ms.Menken I think your father would agree with the strategy."
Uh-oh Don, big mistake, now Rachel is going to break out the big guns!

"I'm not interested in housewives; I want your kind of people Mr. Draper, people who don't care about coupons, whether or not they can afford it, people who are coming to the store because it is expensive."

Rachel Menken is a woman on a mission, she knows what she wants for her store and Sterling Cooper is trying to advice her otherwise. She understands the research, she understands what she should do, but she doesn’t want to do any of those things; and she’s not afraid to let these big bad men know exactly how she feels.

"I’m not going to let a woman talk to me like this. This meeting is over."

Well that’s what I call a conversation stopper.

1960 Media Buying Vs. 2010 Media Buying

I'm working on a homework assignment for my contemporary advertising management class right now and some facts in the book are really getting me thinking.

"Twenty-five years ago it was a pretty simple system: Around 80 percent of all advertising and promotional dollars went to media advertising (television, radio newspapers, magazines, and outdoor). The advertising was created, produced, and placed by full-service advertising agencies- most everything was done under one roof. The agency purchased the media at a 15 percent discount, and that’s how ad agencies made their money"

Were the customers aware of this? Did some smaller agencies (without everything under one roof) actually have to pay that 15 percent to the media? And if so how did they make money? Throughout the four seasons of Mad Men one would get the impression that Lee Garner Jr. isn't the type of man to pay for what he thought was media but is actually Roger's salary.

"Network television advertising over the past 37 years has gotten about 10 times more expensive, even though its total audience has gone up only twofold and its rating (41 percent of US households) has not changed at all? Television advertising has become very expensive. This trend is not confined to the Super Bowl. It is true of TV advertising generally, particularly for truly mega-audience events like the Olympics"

To quote Betty Draper, What is going on?! They shot him!
Well no one really got shot, but considering the concept of television hasn’t changed much over the past 50 years(if you don't take TiVo into consideration), a 10x mark-up on the same space seems a bit excessive. Doesn't it?

A special thank you to one of my favorite professors K.Wayne for assigning homework that made me want to do extra work!

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes- Lucky Strike

"Mad Men- A term coined in the late 1950's to describe the advertising executives of Madison Avenue.-They coined it."

Thus began the AMC Drama Mad Men. The world knows what the 60's were like, but this show puts things into a brand new perspective. They tackle every topic from race to gender, all the way to financial trouble. Who would have thought that one of the first network original shows would cause such a sensation. The show began in 2007 our day, 1960 their day.

"Mad Men has received critical acclaim, particularly for its historical authenticity and visual style, and has won multiple awards, including thirteen Emmys and four Golden Globes. It is the first basic cable series to win the Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series, winning it in 2008, 2009, and 2010."

The show depicts the advertising process from start to finish. Some episodes show all the way from first client meeting to new campaigns for the oldest of friends.

Lucky Strike- The series opens with Don Draper sitting in a bar trying to think of ideas for a new cigarette campaign. Although it would be four years before the Surgeon General released the Surgeon General's Advisory Committee Report on Smoking and Health, the government was beginning to crack down on cigarette advertisements.

He can not think of a thing, he talks to the researcher, his artistic girlfriend on-the-side Midge, and even the waiter at the bar. It takes until the very last minute when Lee Garner Jr. and Sr. are walking out of the conference room and he realizes how simple it is, go all the way back to the beginning: the very beginning, the harvesting of the tobacco that eventually becomes the cigarette.

Eventually they come up with "Everybody else is poison, Lucky Strike is toasted."

Don says, "This is the greatest time in advertising since the invention of cereal", all cigarette companies are being faced with the same dilemma, the times they are-a changing.