talking mad men (and women)

exhibit includes sets: Draper kitchen in Ossining

If you'd told me when I was a junior copywriter that one night I’d be standing in a corridor shooting the breeze with Ken Roman, CEO of Ogilvy, and Herb Schlosser, president of NBC and Adweek critic, Barbara Lippert, not to mention two of the most legendary writers in the business, Helayne Spivack and Tom Messner—well, I’d have thought you’d have tossed back too many Harvey Wallbangers at lunch.

But, thanks to the Museum of the Moving Image, there I was, doing just that tonight. (I heart New York.) In conjunction with their excellent exhibit of Mad Men memorabilia, which includes scripts and brainstorming notes and actual sets from the show, the museum hosted a confab of execs from the Mad Men era reminiscing about the old days, some of which I (ahem) remembered.

and family pics from Matthew Weiner, portrait circa 1975

Barbara Lippert, whose Adweek column was my Monday morning go-to for years, moderated and kicked off by reminding us there was a time when people loved advertising instead of counting the seconds you could swipe it off screen. Ken Roman (author of best David Ogilvy bio) reminded us that Mad Men was a term coined by Matt Weiner—no one on Mad Ave actually used it. Helayne Spivack (claiming to be speaking for all women in advertising—she was only half kidding) talked of her Peggy Olson-ish trajectory of starting as a receptionist at Nadler & Larimer, working up copy between answering phones. Tom Messner (her Don Draper for ten years at Ally & Gargano) treated us to screening of landmark spot he did for MCI when “you only called long distance if somebody died.” And Herb Schlosser, who we have to thank for SNL and Laugh-In (remember?) and Columbo and The Tonight Show remembered Hubert Humphrey refusing to say “Sock it to me” on network television, though Nixon had done it the week before (it took six takes for him not to sound angry) thereby swaying popular vote to help get the Dick elected.

AMC’s Mad Men sails into the sunset this Sunday, but you can catch the outtasite exhibition of costumes, props, videos and research behind it until June 14. How will it end? Predictions embedded in Barbara's marvelous Mad Men Cliff Notes. 

david ogilvy on the future of advertising

There's been a lot of speculation lately about the ad agency of the future. Ironically, I've been reading a new book about an ad man from the past and I'm struck by the prescience of David Ogilvy. He famously insisted on the superiority of advertising that provides measurable results. Ogilvy, Benson and Mather (as it was then called) was the first ad agency to integrate direct marketing (the ancestor of digital) into traditional campaigns. His preference was informed, no doubt, by his experience as a door to door salesman. He began his career hawking stoves, of all things. Not exactly an impulse buy. (Especially to canny Scots in the depths of a Depression. He learned to go around to the back door, to sell the cook first because if she didn't buy in, there was no hope of making a sale to her employer.)

Here's a few Ogilvy mantras that ring as true today as they did in the typewriter era. (Ogilvy never actually used a typewriter, he wrote longhand using only freshly sharpened pencils. For other untold tales about D.O. from the POV of a man who worked with him for years, pick up Kenneth Roman's excellent--and first-- biography King of Madison Avenue.)



The public is more interested in personalities than corporations.

This never changes. The only time someone wants to talk to a corporation, is when they're trying to wangle a refund from it. It may be the age of "conversational marketing" but consumers won't engage with a monolith company unless they're given a reason to do so. (See Alan Wolk's now-famous post on this topic.)

It has been found that the less an advertisement looks like an advertisement, the more people will stop and look at it.

Hence the rise of embedded marketing, iphone apps, branded entertainment and widgets.

You aren't advertising to a standing army; you are advertising to a moving parade.

Of course, the parade moves a lot faster now, and to many more places. Still, a brand message must move nimbly with it.

Every advertisement must contribute to the complex symbol which is the brand image.

A brand message has to live in myriad environments these days, but no matter where it goes, it must carry the same DNA and core values.

Our business is infested with idiots who try to impress by using pretentious jargon.

In his day it was "suboptimize." In our day it's "folksonomy" and "glocalisation" and other words meant to make consultants appear worthy of exorbitant day rates.

Advertising isn't an art form, it's a medium of information.

Ogilvy alienated some colleagues by speaking out against over-the-top TV production extravaganzas and awards. He was interested only in creating messaging that produced results for the client. Here's a pep talk he gave (virtually) to one of his direct response departments. Just substitute the word "digital" for "direct" and it makes for an informative webinar.

more mad women

Having been called out for omissions in my last post, by readers as authoritative as David Ogilvy, I'm adding a few names to my ad hoc compilation of Ad Broads Who Made History:

Paula Green began her career working as a copywriter for Seventeen magazine. After two years helping boost the young magazine's image and trying to change stereotypical perceptions of young women, she moved to the LC Gumbinner Agency. Then, noticing the work coming out of Doyle Dane Bernbach, she applied there and was hired as a copywriter. She was assigned to Avis and was appalled by their current campaign. It was, in her words, "a three-page logo." At the time, rental cars were shoddily cared for and maligned by customers who had to use them. Her first "We Try Harder" ads "were really creating an operating manual for the company saying you had to give customers a clean car, windshield wipers had to work, cars had to have a full tank of gas." When she extended the campaign to "Avis is only No. 2 in rent a cars. So why go with us?" many in the agency objected, feeling that No. 2 was a put-down. Green sent the research department to airports, etc. with the ads on 3 x5 index cards. Researchers came back to report that 50% of the people thought that No. 2 meant "not as good as." Bernbach asked, "What about the other 50%?", thus saving the campaign which, based on research results, they were able to sell to the client.

Green went on to become group head at DDB and its first woman creative management supervisor. By the end of 1969, having reached the highest position available to her there, she left to start her own agency, Green Dolmatch, partnering with her husband Murray Dolmatch. After eight years, the agency became Paula Green advertising, responsible for campaigns like "Goya Oh Boy-a!" for Goya foods in the 1980s. Her ad philosophy? "Girls smiling seductively from bathtubs appeal to art directors, not women customers."

Mary Fillius, a copywriter at the Weintraub agency wrote the Maidenform campaign that, over at Sterling Cooper, is getting knickers in a twist. The campaign was launched in August 1949 and ran for decades. It was instrumental in transforming unmentionables into undergarments.

One of David Ogilvy's key copywriters was Riva Fine who worked with art director Bill Binzen on Schweppes in the 1950s. They used the company's colorful chief executive in the ads--Edward Whitehead, a former Royal Navy Officer from WW2.

Rita Selden was a copywriter in Phyllis Robinson's group at Doyle Dane Bernbach. One day she was walking past the office of art director Helmut Krone and saw him staring at a photo of a VW. He told her that, somehow, it would make a great ad. Although the car (which wasn't called a Beetle until 1967) looked perfect to the naked eye, it had been rejected by VWs strict inspection team. "Why don't you just say 'Lemon'?" Selden suggested.

the new york honk

Cary Grant had it. Nelson Rockefeller had it. According to Tom Wolfe, Clay Felker had it: 

the most fashionable accent an American male could have at that time, namely, the spring of 1963. One achieved it by forcing all words out through the nostrils rather than the mouth. It was at once virile … and utterly affected.

The most Legendary Honker in the ad biz was David Ogilvy--who had the original, from London, the place from which so much of fashionable NY was imported in those days. Hear it in this rather surprising clip in which he opines on the superiority of direct advertising over general.