mad men reading list

It's a soggy Saturday where I am (Northwest CT) making it an excellent day to do what you never have time for anymore: reading longform. For Mad Men fans, I've compiled a list of books that memorialize those who fought in the Advertising Wars:

Jerry Della Femina's seminal ad memoir "From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor" was first published in 1970 and made the ad business sound so enticing it inspired me (and many others) to go into it.

Yes, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit is a film but the novel is better imho, even without Gregory Peck's moving performance. Great writing, complex portrait of Mad Men-era office life and satisfying exploration of surprisingly contemporary theme of relative values of family vs. career.

And speaking of novels that are (way) better than films adapted from them, Revolutionary Road tells a dark story in Yates' stellar prose, the tale of a couple who buy into the American Dream of the 1960s and how it all unravels for them. She's a homemaker (of course) and he's got a thankless job in the ad industry (oxymoron?) The book resonates with vivid Mad Men-esque scenes like the one in a hospital waiting room, where everyone is smoking cigarettes.

Joshua Ferris was a copywriter in a cubicle in Chicago which gave him the chops to write a hilarious fictional sendup of the business Then We Came to the End. I defy anyone in advertising to read this without laughing. Out loud. Like I did. On a subway. So loud, the person next to you gives up the seat.

If there is a real-life Peggy Olson, it's Jane Maas who started at Ogilvy in 1964 and rose to be creative director and agency officer. With good-humor, wit and convincing detail, Mad Women tells the story of what it took to break into the mad men's club with award-winning work like the "I Love NY" campaign while raising two daughters you want to grow up to be normal.


I was freelancing at McCann when ECD Nina DiSesa's book came out and corridors were abuzz with alternating takes on the book: "It's brilliant!" "It's slander!" "It's her swan song before getting out of the business!"I immensely enjoyed Seducing the Boys Club which is not only the well-told story of how DiSesa herself ceiling-crashed to the top, it's advice to women in her wake on how to "Lean In" and grab those titles and agency stock-options.

I worked down the hall from John Kenney at Ogilvy and have long admired his writing, not just his elegant copywriter prose, but his humor pieces in the New York Times and the New Yorker which are LOL-funny. So is Truth in Advertising, a new satire on the business, which is alternately sweet and sad and hilariously on target. Gwyneth Paltrow doing a diapers commercial that has to stop filming because the baby cast to be hers turns out to be black? Only a veteran of the business could come up with that.

What are the odds that two ex-copywriters from Ogilvy would come out with a novel set in advertising, at the same time? From the same publisher? Another debut novel from Simon and Schuster this season is my own: Making It: A Novel of Madison Avenue. It's a coming-of-middle age story about a woman and a business (advertising, of course.) It’s sort of like Mad Men thirty years later, from the point of view of an older, wiser, married Peggy Olson. One of the themes explored is technology, and the book offers readers opportunities to further explore characters in a digitally enhanced epilogue. Advertising, meet Transmedia. (Hey, where better to peddle your wares than on your own blog?)

Happy reading!

museum of advertising history

Hey, today is Follow a Library day on twitter (who knew?) The library I'm following is no ordinary library. It's a little-known treasure trove within Duke University's Rare Books Library, home to the largest collection of ad artifacts in the world.

The Center's director Jacqueline Reid kindly led Ad Age podcaster Bob "Beancast" Knorpp and me on a tour this week and we were both amazed by breadth and depth of the collection. (Bob was so impressed, he did an impromptu podcast, available here with a timelier post of his thoughts.)

The John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History contains 2 miles of shelving on which are stored reels for nearly 8800 commercials dating back to the 50s, print ads, billboards, radio tapes and even the paper trails leading up to their production: call reports, strategy statements, research, even media plans. Artifacts aren't only saved, they're preserved: indexed and organized so they're easily retrievable, a far better system than keeping agency materials in storage houses. The Center began when JWT donated its archives in 1992. Since then other agencies have followed and the Center still accepts materials from ad agencies seeking the best way to preserve their collections.

We were treated to an incredible array of adifacts redolent of 60s culture and values, including a 1968 billboard "Beautify America, Get a Haircut", a print ad for Topper Toys which promised that your daughter won't turn into a hippie if you'll buy her an Easy Bake Oven and a newspaper article announcing LBJ's decision to employ the "new glamor girl of the ad industry", "pretty" Mary Wells to polish his image.

Equally fascinating were ad-related items like a DeBeers memo dated 1961 titled "Sportswear and Its Effect on the Precious Jewelry Market" in which a researcher deplored the cultural shift to more casual fashions: Women don't wear diamonds with tweeds! Diamond Industry in a Panic!

Focus group materials for Ballantine beer: Among posters portraying a woman wearing a hat, which do you prefer: women wearing large hats, or women wearing small hats?

A 1963 in-house pamphlet from JWT titled, "Advertising, A Career for Women" encouraged women to become copywriters, after putting in time as a secretary, of course. Could Mad Men's representation of Peggy Olson as lone copywriter be skewed? The Center's director thinks so. She claims, "The role of women in advertising agencies historically has been stronger than has been shown in Mad Men." She offers photo proof in this video. See what you think.

have traditional ad creatives exceeded their sell-by dates?

Ana Andjelic wrote a provocative post this week on a topic that's got Adland's knickers in a twist, a piece so provocative, she's incited no less than seven comments from one irate Mad Man. Her thesis is that traditional advertising creativity is being marginalized.

"The 'kick-ass' creative director and what he/she does is no longer culturally relevant as it used to be. Today's creativity is way more collective, iterative, and yes, humble. To deliver it, creatives got to move away from "I have an idea, and it's brilliant" MO: the artistry today is in creating environments where collective creativity can flourish."

Ana postulates that the trend of traditional ad creatives leaving motherships to start up new enterprises has nothing to do with producing new agency models, everything to do with renegades from BDAs (hi George) setting out to replicate old models that let them continue to do what made them a success in the first place.

I agree with Ana that traditional advertising is itself being marginalized. (Oh, for the days that Harry Crane enjoyed, when all a brand had to do was buy 60 seconds on 3 networks to hit a stationary target of 85% of the country's consumers.)

But the creativity behind traditional advertising? Here to stay, I hope. Because non-linear marketing brains capable of producing great TV and print can be essential contributors to greatness in a multi-platform arena. At least three examples of recent digital goodness--Old Spice, Tipp-Ex and Pepsi Refresh--are products of creatives at traditional ad agencies.

True, breakthrough creative isn't a headline anymore. (Headline: just the sound of the word in your mouth feels ancient, doesn't it?) And creating content for old media and new(ish) media require different ways of thinking. To do a great print ad, you don't have to know how the ad is printed, but you can't do great digital without understanding at least some of the technology behind it. To their credit, plenty of traditional ad types have taken time to explore the space and find that creative (and collaborative) skills they've relied on for years are valuable in coming up with new content, complete with moving parts.

Perhaps some of the problem lies in traditional Adland's limited use of the label "creative". The longheld convention of titling one department "creative", implying that those in other departments aren't, has understandably pissed off "non-creatives" for years. Post-millennial shops like Big Spaceship have done away with the nomenclature entirely, eliminating creative from all titles because "everyone is."

Of course, creative thinking is essential to campaign success no matter which part of a campaign you're contributing to. And as Ana points out, there's artistry in creating environments where collective creativity can flourish. But it's not the same skill as coming up with concepts for brands year after year, noise-making ideas that are on strategy, on deadline and executable within budget. So, Ana, please don't toss out all of us traditional creatives just yet!

is radio the new TV?

Thanks to wonders of The Worldwide Internet, radio listening is on the rise, and as TV audiences continue to dwindle, I wonder if at some point we'll hit ratios of listeners vs. viewers we haven't seen since 1959.

Part of what accounts for radio's comeback is podcasting, which allows you to tune into discussions that mine whatever esoteric subject you're interested in. If you're reading this blog (hey, thanks, btw) you're no doubt interested in advertising, and two podcasts devoted to this subject stand out.

You may already know about the excellent Beancast, a weekly roundtable discussion hosted by Bob Knorpp. Now, two friends of Beancast have launched Adverve, a less formal podcast devoted to deconstructing the industry. Bill Green (of Make the Logo Bigger) and Angela Natividad (of Adrants) launched the first episode in October exploring a subject rarely spoken of in polite company: Racism in Advertising. Guest speaker Hadji Williams (whom you may know from Racialicious) had so many interesting things to say on the matter, the show was promptly downloaded almost 2000 times. (You can grab it in its entirety here and here .) Bill and Angela have pledged to explore all the "isms" in the business, and I was glad to be tapped for their recent show on ageism. What's next? Possibilities abound: Sexism. Plagiarism. Narcissm. And (paging Don Draper) alcoholism. Angela suggests renaming the series "Adverve Intervention." Ear buds and a sidecar, please.

overpromise of metrics

There's a new app that purports to analyze your headline. Just feed in your line (20 words or less) and the analyzer digests it, swirls it around and spits out numbers that show how well it will resonate with consumers.

If you make ads for a living, or know people who do, you probably agree that this idea is ludicrous. Too much about writing a headline is immeasurable. How it plays off the visual, for starters. "Lemon" wouldn't have worked nearly so well if it had appeared for Sunkist, over a shot of a lemon.

The headline analyzer is, to me, a perfect example of the overpromise of metrics.

Metrics has become a big part of the ad business lately because so much of the business is shifting online. The overall budget for digital is predicted to double in five years while that for  traditional (you guessed it) is predicted to flatten. Part of the reason for this shift is metrics. "You can track it!" can sound awfully persuasive to brand managers wondering (as the saying goes) which half of their ad budget they're throwing away.

Ad Contrarian crankily observes that advertising now consists of two very different disciplines: (1) making ads and (2) making justification for ads. Ironically, the latter may ultimately prove more remunerative. A torrent of analytic apps are now available and many more are in beta, measuring not only rudimentary CTR and conversion rates but dwell time, trending, sentiment, chatter, shareability, influence. Sure, those analytics tell us something. But what they tell us depends largely on what we want to hear. Numbers can be made to say almost anything, as anyone who's been audited by the IRS knows. 

That's not to say that metrics aren't valuable. For one thing, they're often still key in selling clients on the idea of doing digital advertising, just as response rates once convinced them of the worth of doing direct. What analytics turns up can be endlessly fascinating. But, curious, isn't it, how often stats prove irrelevant, failing to influence marketing behavior. Managers can be quick to cite data when it supports their thinking; just as quick, if it doesn't, to explain it away. 

Which, imo, is the way it should be. Advertising is, and always will be, more art than science. Because its success depends on human persuasion, which has required skills of creativity since Eve sold the apple. Data can help point up what you should say, but how you should say it (and where and when) is an art. If advertising were a science, every widget-maker with a headline analyzer would be a global success.

why most web ad creative still sucks

Brian Morrissey of Adweek posed an interesting question the other day: Are designers to blame for bad web ads?

(Of course not everyone thinks they're bad. But if you're reading this blog, you probably agree that with a few notable exceptions, they are pretty awful. For you (and me) there's now Ad Block Plus-an app that replaces online ads with images from curated photography collections (!)

I think the fault for lame web creative lies not with designers, but with old agency constructs. As long as creatives see web campaign components as add-ons, as long as we're willing to throw them over the ropes to "guys in interactive" and as long as "interactives" work in isolation, kept out of the club where briefings, strategy and creative executions take place, web ad space will continue to be a place where designers try to out-flash, out-code, out-animate each other. In other words, ads will remain tactically-focused, failing to forge emotional connections basic to the power of advertising's persuasiveness. Imagine what print ads or TV spots would look like if created by only those in production.

Recently, IAB chief Randall Rothenberg argued for putting creatives together with web designers (or creative technologists or digital experience strategists or whatever is the au courant title of day) to form a new creative partnership as transformational to our business as Bill Bernbach pairing copywriters and art directors. (Fact from the wayback machine: until the 60s, they worked apart. Writers used to slip copy under AD's doors, with requests for illustration and--because the requests were coming from writers-- often didn't make sense from a visual perspective. An oldtimer once told me he received a yellow page of aspirin copy with the request for drawing of "man without a headache".)

I agree with Rothenberg that before creative change in web advertising can take place, we need to change the way web creative is done. (Bob Greenburg of R/GA has been saying this for a while.) We have to stop segregating web advertising from advertising. If the state of online creative is to improve, we have to take what we've learned in decades of doing offline advertising and, working with new rules of consumer engagement, take back creative in the digital space.

still twitter-averse? finding time to get roundtuit

Near a little town in the country I escape to on weekends there's a modest diner with the unlikely name of Round Tuit, opened in the 1930s by a farmer who'd talked about opening a restaurant for years. Eventually, the farmer died and the diner passed to his son. Like many small business owners, the son had no insurance. So when the Round Tuit burned down, I mourned the loss of an institution I thought gone for good. But I'd underestimated the stoutheartedness of local patrons. Enough money was raised to rebuild the restaurant and the son lovingly replicated his father's place in every small detail: same linoleum tiles, same Formica tabletops, same wood panelled walls, even the same plastic-framed photos of cows on them. (Only thing he did differently was the pie case, because the original pie case people had gone out of business.)

Sorry to say, I was reminded of Rountuit at the Clios this week. Because it was clear that some ad agencies boasting "digital departments" have built them on the same entrenched practices and outdated values that have fed the way the ad business has been operating for years.

"Twitter sucks," according to the Chief Digital Officer of a top tier agency, who is presumably advising global clients on navigating social media.

"I don't do twitter," announced another speaker who went on to explain he was holding off having to learn it because, "the next big thing is probably just around the corner."

Sure, there were provocative speeches by agency creatives who get it. But twitter-aversion was rampant enough to make me wonder: why is an industry that prides itself on pioneering thought and creative breakthroughs having to be led to the sm frontier by the very clients we're supposed to be leading?

"If I let one more time-suck into my life, I'm doomed," said an ECD who was putting off learning twitter until this summer when her teenager was around. I understood her being daunted by the time barrier. Like many ad agency execs, she's struggling to stretch already long days made longer by reduced bugets, dwindling staff and heightened client demands--like demands to get them into social media.

But twitter (or any social media platform) isn't a monster that consumes your valuable hours while you sit on the sidelines, helplessly watching the clock.

Twitter takes only as much time as you let it. So even if you don't have time to get into Twitter, you have time to get it. OK, don't use it to post what you're having for breakfast. (Most tweeters don't, after their first post or two.) Use it for what most (including smart folks at Google) consider to be its most valuable feature: search.

Twitter search can help you ferret out nuggets of information, insights that can be gold for you and your clients. Search your company, your clients, your clients' products, their competitors. Get a sense of what's happening in your niche in the industry, right this minute, all over the world.

And, Twitter automatically informs searchers of "trending topics"-- top ten words appearing right now on Twitter. It's the most efficient way to keep abreast on what's toplining in news. The morning I saw "Biden" I knew, of course, he'd been picked. "Updike" told me, alas, he had died. Just now, I searched Twitter and AT&T came up. Why? I clicked through and discovered that the company is considering cuts to Iphone price plans. If your client is a mobile, such news might be relevant to a meeting you're leading. And knowing it instantly can make you look a lot more wise and informed than you probably feel these days.

Which brings me to another reason to "lurk" on twitter. It makes you smarter. You know how reading a great columnist can make you sound knowledgeable? Following people who share content relevant to you and your clients can definitely make you wiser (and more valuable) at meetings. Because you're being constantly fed by people plugged into your industry sharing the latest news on what's happening in it.

So, ad brethren: if you're not into twitter, time to get round tuit. Unless you're planning  a change of career. Like moving to the country to open a diner. Where you'd face daunting competition from a much-beloved and enduring brand. Not to mention the pie.

postcards from vegas

Last night was the CLIO Moving Image Awards (formerly known as Television) and the show opened with a Walk of Fame where larger than life icons of classic commercials bounced, danced and jiggled down a red carpet: Kool-Aid Man, Nesquik Bunny, Michelin Man, Charlie the Tuna. Big line for photos with Morris the Cat. Yep, I succumbed.



It wouldn't be Vegas without Barry Manilow who was honored with a Clio for his contributions to advertising, jingles he obligingly belted out in a medley on a white baby grand: You deserve a break today...I am stuck on BandAid...Like a good neighbor...All across the nation, it's the Pepsi generation...It's the most original soft drink...Up, up and away...no wait, he didn't write that one, only suggested it for the next Viagra commercial. He was wildly cheered by a standing crowd, some of whom held up lighters in tribute. (yes lighters. It's Vegas. You can smoke indoors. And engage in other activities the real world prohibits.)



Vintage spots from the 70s and 80s evoked nostalgic sighs from the audience. Remeber Coke's Mean Joe Green from 1979?



The kid who handed the Coke to Mean Joe was honored with a CLIO last night, 40 years later. He's Tom Okon. His dad was a Mad Man at Benton & Bowles and invited his brother to a casting session. Tom tagged along and was cast for the spot instead. He's got four kids of his own now. When I asked if he was in the business, he look surprised. Nope. He owns a construction company.



Extending the theme of Former Child Stars Now on the Speaking Circuit, presenter for the evening was Chris Knight. Peter from the Brady Bunch, remember?



Still here? You must be reading to find out who won the awards. Click through.

greetings from vegas. but where were the CLIO's in 1963?

Writing this from (as the sign says) "Fabulous Las Vegas" where the Clio Awards is celebrating its 50th anniversary by showcasing statuette-winners from five decades. They'll also be honoring Matt Weiner tonight for his Mad Men work that dramatizes advertising in the 1960s, generally considered to be the turning point in the business, the time when advertising became a legitimate career instead of a shady enterprise propogated by hucksters. (You may not agree that this shift occurred.)

Betty Draper will be tweeting the event with other Mad Men on Twitter. (From a 1963 POV, of course.) Of course she'll be far more dressed up than most attendees. In the 60s, award shows were black tie. Every gentleman owned one. The few female invitees toted gowns and heels to their offices and you didn't want to go to the ladies room at 5 PM when air was heavy with perfume and hairspray and you'd likely see a boss in her girdle.

Doing a little research into CLIO archives turns up names long gone, but not quite forgotten: Normal, Craig & Kummel; NW Ayer; Oglivy, Benson & Mather; Paper, Koenig, Lois; Benton & Bowles (more commonly referred to as B&B.)

Still-vibrant DDB won best in 1963 for this sixty-second long (interminable, by our standards) spot using actor Jack Gilford for Cracker Jacks. Creative kudos went to writer Judy Protas (though the spot is silent) and inimitable art director Bob Gage.

why there will always be advertising

From the index mines of Jessica Hagy.

friday flashback-ayds before aids

Before Atkins or pilates, how did women stay looking good in their shirtwaists and twin sets? They got Ayds! Little candies, invidually wrapped (like Viactivs) were introduced in the 40s with the claim that users could "lose up to 10 pounds in 5 days, without dieting or exercising." After the FTC objected, the product promise had to be modified, but did not deter growing success of The Ayds Reducing Plan with Candy Cubes which became wildly popular until the early 80s, when a miscalculating acquisitions company purchased rights to the name.

friday flashback--Tom Hanks, creative director, 1986

My 19-year old goes back to college next week and in searching for bonding activities of mutual enjoyment, I netflixed Nothing in Common, an advertising movie I missed somehow. (Oh, right. It came out the year I birthed my first child, a year in which the only movies I saw were reruns at 2 in the morning while breastfeeding.)

It was a great choice, a fun, funny, shareable film. Early Tom Hanks. Bess Armstrong. Sela Ward. "I can't believe it!" I gasped when Jackie Gleason's name flashed on screen. My daughter gasped, too. Someone her age likes Jackie Gleason? Nah. Opening credits were scrolling over first scene which takes place on a plane and announcement is made to extinguish all smoking materials. "You could smoke on a plane?" she said, incredulous.

Which had me noticing all kinds of things that have gone the way of smoking sections and DOS:

marker sets in 87,987 graduating colors
shoulder pads
storyboard pads with frames that looked like mini TV screens
Flashdance-type cutoff sweatshirt sleeves--for guys
epaulets
purple lipstick
mechanical snow makers on set
long gloves worn with wrist-bling on top
designer briefcases
portable phones with pull-out antennas
wall phones
secretaries

Of course, some things never change:

pencils stuck in acoustic ceiling tiles
presentation jitters (Don't bother me now, I'm in pre-game.)
cubicles
theatrics during new business pitches
clueless clients
impossibility of juggling work and family
bosses who get it--and bosses who don't
window office envy
toy collections in creative offices
on set--"client areas" to keep clients as far away from director as possible (But why can't we watch the monitors over there.)
nepotism

friday flashback: this 1979 ad could run today

For Prius.  It was art directed and illustrated by Helmut Krone, legendary art director and Real Life Mad Man at Doyle Dane Bernbach (NY) who was one of the greatest designers ever to wield an exacto. He knew how to use image to define corporate personality long before "brand" was used as a verb--an etymological development Ad Contrarian blames for our industry being in such a muddle. (Read the book.)

how does a nice kid like you end up in advertising?

If you're a young creative still on your first job, here's a question from a friend who's updating a book about breaking into the business: in what form did you show your prospective boss your portfolio? Hard copy? DVD? Website? Hologram? No correct answers, no cash prizes, just undying appreciation.

sunday new york times, biz section, pg 5

Laggard. Instead of spending uncompensated time reading blogs like this, or posting on better ones, you could be making $535/hour brandspeeding. What's brandspeeding? According to a full page ad in today's NY Times, it's a no-nonsense, 10 day alternative to ponderous and overly expensive approaches to new products' and brand positioning creation. (Sorry, no link.)

Brandspeeding sounds like advertising on Adderall. Copy claims that it's helping companies invent a new product, create a brand positioning for it and coming up with a real introductory advertisement--all in 10 days.

How, old-school thinkers may wonder, is this possible? Because Speed allows great ideas to happen before bureaucracy and over thinking gum up the works. At last a way to eliminate client revisions (bureaucracy) and testing (over thinking) so that creatives need never go back to a drawing board.

The going rate for a 10-day brandspeeding project is $42,800. Plus expenses. Pro-rated that's $4280 a day. In a year, you could conceivably rack up over $1.5 million.

How to get started? First, get a client to buy into the process. Then, it's easy as 1,2,3:

#1. First, spend a half-day (a mere half-day!) with 15-20 client personnel in a meeting you call an invention workshop. Ostensibly, this meeting is to gather client input, but my guess is, what it's really meant to do is to fulfill marketing personnel's dream of "being creative"--something ad agency types are forever putting the kibosh on.

#2. Stage another half-day (half-day!) session with 12 invention specialists in varied creative careers. Invention specialists! Inspired title for friends and out of work colleagues (freelancers, failed novelists, artists without grants, photographers who haven't landed a job in years) who can be coerced into an afternoon at a corporate park in New Jersey--say you'll cater the meeting and it should be a cinch.

#3. Pick a product and positioning that comes out of the sessions and develop a real introductory advertisement for it. Thus cleverly short-circuiting the usual ad-making process which allows for pesky client feedback, revision rounds, legal mandates and testing.

I googled the agency that placed the ad which claims in a subhead that their client roster includes 66 of the Top 100 Global Brands. (For speed-mongers, their site takes a surprisingly long time to load.) But all I found posted were print ads for failed or ancillary brand extensions. Like a new sandwich from Wendy's featuring the dubious combination of chicken, ham and pecans. A sonorous spread for a bank service with the headline Be the early bird. Visual: Bird getting a worm.

I have to hand it to them, however, for the genius it took to come up with an agency deliverable that produces more fee than tsuris. And if they can make enough from it to place full page in the Times, just think of the riches awaiting ad grunts with talent.

the party's over

You'd think there'd be nothing better for a soon-to-be-out-of-work freelancer than a reunion of your old agency. But not if old is the operative word. Hundreds showed up at a designated restaurant last night, but most were pimping for freelance, just like I was. Common topics of conversation over cheese cubes and mini-crabcakes: how to segue into interactive if you can't program a phone and how to make your hot flashes appear to be something else. The former ECD and office hearthrob who must be in his 70s looked amazingly fit--probably because he now lives in the sunny Hamptons with a jailbait wife and their 5 year old son. Most people, alas, haven't fared so well and would have been unrecognizable were it not for their nametags. Which were helpfully written in 54 point type.

An art director who was "kick-ass" in 1981 bemoaned her new freelance job at a BDA, working on tampons. "I saw my writer for 2 seconds, she just threw me headlines and said to make them look good. They're not even headlines, they're package copy. Two guys in their thirties are each vying to be head of the account. They keep coming to my desk separately, hissing, 'Don't listen to him, you work for me!' "

Of course, I asked her if they needed a writer.

from someecards via goodURLbadURL

thank you, Nina DiSesa

for having the cojones to say in Adweek what's been said in the women's loo for decades. Of course, unlike the rest of us, you'll never need another job in the business.

While watching Mad Men last year, I was struck by how precisely this brilliantly produced series captured the world of New York advertising as it must have been in 1962, and I was thankful that I didn't work in advertising back then.

I started as a copywriter in 1973, and shortly after that I was working successfully on an automotive additive business for a full year. I was asked off the business when the client discovered I was a woman.

Fast-forward to 1983 when I started at Y&R in New York —eerily similar to the Mad world of 1962—where the going gag was that a woman would never be group creative director, the second most powerful position there, unless she could pee standing up.

It's 2008. How are we doing?

How many women are creative directors in the large New York agencies?

How many women are running advertising agencies that don't have their name on the door?

How many women have P&L responsibilities that indicate real control and authority?

Although I have led creative departments at two agencies (JWT, Chicago, and McCann Erickson, New York), advertising is still by and large a boys club. And I think the few women who hold top positions along with me will agree. It's still big news when a woman is given the top job in our industry. Women in charge at boys clubs are still an anomaly. And it's not just the case in advertising. Forty years after women burned their bras to liberate their sex, only 2 percent of the Fortune 1000 CEOs are women. Two percent!

What are we doing wrong?

First of all, it's not a level playing field, and we need to get over that. Stop complaining about it, stop getting irate and do something about it. And for God's sake, don't bash men.

I have noticed that the women who make it in these boys clubs have a few things in common. The main thing is that almost all of us were promoted and supported by men. The men we worked for and with felt comfortable around us. We learned to adopt some of the male traits that make men so successful, and in doing so, we reminded the men of the thing they admire most: themselves.

Throughout my career I have tried to help women get more in touch with their male sides by being more decisive, focused, competitive and shrewd about asking for what they want and expecting what they deserve. At the same time, we need to exploit our uniquely female traits like compassion, collaboration, intuition and empathy—things a man simply doesn't want to learn.

It's a fine line we women walk when we are trying to become players in the boys clubs. If we are too girly-girly, the men won't relax around us and they will treat us like women. I hate when that happens.

I knew I was in trouble back in 1973 when I met that automotive client for the first time. He needed some copy changed ASAP, so I was introduced to him and fixed his ad while he watched—kind of like when AAA comes to change a tire. He was very polite to me, and that was the kiss of death. With the men he was always rowdy, crude and raucous.

At the same time, we can't become just like the men: We know what those women are like.

We have amazing powers as women. If we're smart and use our powers without malice, we can seduce and manipulate the men in our lives to earn their affection and even their respect.

There is an art to seduction and manipulation. I think I always knew this, but the notion crystallized for me during my first marriage to an out-of-work Sicilian actor who felt it was unmanly to help with household chores. So I worked at a full-time job, then did the shopping, cooked the meals and cleaned the apartment.

One day I bought a super heavy-duty vacuum cleaner, and after a few days I told my husband I was returning it. It was just too heavy for me to manage, I said. I wasn't strong enough to push it around. "I can do it," he boasted, and for the duration of our marriage he did all the vacuuming. My strategy had worked.

The skillful use of benevolent manipulation—where everybody wins—works wonders at work, too. I use the vacuum-cleaner strategy all the time. I play on men's masculine pride and their natural instincts to protect the "weaker" sex.

I can't figure this out and I'm exhausted," I will say to one of the men.

"And if it's not done by tomorrow, I'm dead."

"I'll do it," he'll invariably say.

But his rescue mission isn't as satisfying to him unless I appreciate the sacrifice he is making on my behalf.

This is as crucial as saying "thank you."

"No, no, you're swamped, too," I say.

"I'll make the time for it."

"Thank you. I love you."

"I know."

"You're welcome."

It's like great sex. Everyone walks away feeling fulfilled.

Now, I know that a lot of women will object to the notion of using seduction and manipulation in the workplace.

"Why should we stoop to conquer?" they ask. "We're smart, we're educated, and we work as hard as the men."

That's not enough. We've been doing that for years, and where has it gotten us? In most boys clubs there are token women, just enough of us in enough positions to prove that the old boy network is enlightened.

We've been playing by everyone else's rules long enough. It's time to screw the rules and make up your own. Take it from a woman who has been in advertising for 35 years: The most dramatic change in advertising since 1962 is that most of us have stopped smoking.

Nina DiSesa is chairman (not chairperson?) of McCann Erickson, New York.

[via adweek]

why people hate us

At a party recently, I met a woman who introduced herself as a Collections Manager for an art gallery. What does a Collections Manager do? I asked. She got a faraway look and began to elucidate: she puts her considerable art education to use by explaining the gallery's works to a collector, elaborating on a painting's influences, its origins, on what makes it remarkable, so that often the collector wants to take it home for himself. Like, buy it? I asked. Turns out she works on commission, and it took supreme self control for me not to remark on the similarity of our occupations. I knew that to do so would be an insult to her.

But why? Why is advertising one of the world's most reviled professions, one that in surveys, rates below even car dealers? We provide entertainment--often more entertainment than the content into which our stuff is embedded. We can't lie anymore, thanks to a labyrinth of consumer-protecting rules to which copy must comply. (Now, deceptive ads result in expensive lawsuits by entire cities.) And, in best case scenarios, what we do actually constitutes public education. (See Dove.)

But then, I'm knocked off my high horse by something like this. The Wall Street Journal discloses that Wacoal is introducing a girdle for men. The man-girdle is being advertised first in Japan (as if salarymen aren't already under enough pressure) not as a vanity product, but health-promoting. A statement from a doctor claims the underwear helps reduce body fat. It comes (of course) with a promotional DVD jam-packed with product benefits like how the girdle makes you take longer strides, helping you expend calories.

Between this and a scoop from Tangerine Toad alerting me to a SkyMall magazine ad hawking Gravity Defyer Shoes, I see there's still plenty to begrudge about advertising. No wonder I am reticent to disclose my profession in public, as when traveling abroad I sometimes lie about my country of origin (um, I'm from Canada) so as not to elicit in strangers feelings of undue contempt.

advertising emoticons

:-)
The client loves the ad.

:-(
The client loves the ad but wants to change the headline and visual.

:-D
If I laugh at the CD's lame jokes, he'll put me on a better account.

I - O
How much longer is this research meeting?

%-(
What did R&D say? I am confused.

[:- |
I can't be productive if I'm not wearing my Ipod.

: - O
The pitch is tomorrow? I thought it was next week.

:-l
They're moving our department to the sub-basement? Whatever.

: *)
Last year's Christmas Party was better.

; - )
Don't tell him I think his work sucks, OK?

BD
Awesome. T&E approved all my minibar charges.

: P
The client wants the logo bigger.

x- (
The logo's so big a blind person can read it.

< : o )
You need the comp now? Want that with fries?

-- with a nod to Tom McNichol