Good TV shows are products of excellence. They’re well crafted, have enduring story lines with strong appeal and are, in some ways, reasonable works of art. Sometimes art is so credible that life automatically imitates it. In a way, that’s the definition of advertising. You state a desired need and demonstrate an effective product that meets that need. You do this in the form of an Ad on TV, the radio, billboards, social media and the Internet. And, then you watch and wait. If product sales improve, you’ve done your job. If not, time to rethink the existing need.
MadMen, the TV show about the admen of Madison Ave on AMC’s reveals the glitz, glamour and the dark side of advertising. It’s retro, it’s neat and it’s got pizazz. This show provides quite an accurate insight into what life used to be in the States (and on Madison Ave) in the early sixties.
The best part of the show is the dialog. The observations, the client pitches, the brainstorming, the conversations sometimes contain some amazing lines that stay with you when the show goes away. Don Draper, the show’s central character has some of the most profound and thought-provoking lines in the show. Here are some of the more thoughtful lines :
While pitching the new Kodak product to the Kodak team :
- Well, technology is a glittering lure. But there is the rare occasion when the public can be engaged on a level beyond flash, if they have a sentimental bond with the product. My first job, I was in house, at a fur company and worked with this old pro copywriter Greek, named Teddy. And Teddy told me the most important idea in advertising is “new.” It creates an itch. You simply put your product in there as a kind of calamine lotion. But he also talked about a deeper bond with the product: nostalgia. It’s delicate. But potent.
Teddy told me that in Greek, “nostalgia” literally means “the pain from an old wound.” It’s a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone. This device isn’t a spaceship, it’s a time machine. It goes backwards, and forwards… it takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It’s not called the wheel, it’s called the carousel. It lets us travel the way a child travels – around and around, and back home again, to a place where we know are loved.
While pitching Lucky Strike cigarettes’ new positioning :
- Advertising is based on one thing: happiness. And do 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 a road that screams with reassurance that whatever you’re doing is OK. You are OK.
In conversation:
- I have a life. And it only goes in one direction. Forward.
Conversing with a client:
- Well, it wasn’t a lie. It was…ineptitude with insufficient cover.
In conversation:
- Sterling Cooper has more failed artists and intellectuals than the Third Reich.
Bringing hipsters down to reality:
- I hate to break it to you but there is no big lie. There is no system. The universe is indifferent.
Pitching the Belle Jolie ad copy to clients:
- Listen. I’m not here to tell you about Jesus. You already know about Jesus. He either lives in your heart or He doesn’t. Every woman wants choices. But in the end, none wants to be one of a hundred in a box. She’s unique. She makes the choices and she’s chosen him. She wants to tell the world, he’s mine. He belongs to me, not you.
In conversation:
- The reason you haven’t felt it (love) is because it doesn’t exist. What you call love was invented by guys like me, to sell nylons. You’re born alone and you die alone and this world just drops a bunch of rules on top of you to make you forget those facts. But I never forget. I’m living like there’s no tomorrow, because there isn’t one.
In conversation at work:
- You’re talking as if they’re some fresh version of us. They’re not. Young people don’t know anything, especially that they’re young.
In passing :
- Change isn’t good or bad. It just is.
- There will be fat years and there will be lean years, but it is going to rain.
- Get out of here and move forward. This never happened. It will shock you how much it never happened.
- You know what my father used to say? “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
- Kids today, they have no one to look up to. Cuz they’re looking up to us.
