The Real Mad Men
Authors: Andrew Cracknell
MAD
MEN
Copyright © 2011, Elwin Street Productions
Conceived and produced by
Elwin Street Productions
144 Liverpool Road
London N1 1LA
First published in the United States in 2011 by Running Press Book Publishers, A Member of the Perseus Books Group.
All rights reserved under the Pan-American and International Copyright Conventions.
This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without written permission from the publisher.
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.
ISBN 978-0-7624-4243-0
Library of Congress Control Number: 2011926064
9Â Â 8Â Â 7Â Â 6Â Â 5Â Â 4Â Â 3Â Â 2Â Â 1
Digit on the right indicates the number of this printing
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PICTURE CREDITS
Reproduction of images authorized by:
Advertising Archives:
pp. 98
(bottom right),
99
(bottom)
Alamy: front flap,
123
Avis Rent-a-car:
p. 128
Bayer HealthCare LLC:
p. 189
Bimbo Bakeries USA, Inc:
p. 67
Chivas Brothers:
p. 127
Coyne & Blanchard, Inc., DBA Communication Arts:
pp. 174â175
DDB Worldwide Communication Group Inc.:
pp. 59
,
67
,
81
Duke University, North Carolina:
p. 27
El Al Israel Airlines:
p. 81
George Lois:
pp. 105
,
111
,
112
,
113
,
115
,
119
,
168
,
169
Getty Images:
pp. 4
,
15
,
31
,
49
,
53
,
69
,
75
,
83
,
101
,
145
,
193
iStockphoto:
p. 11
Jon Williamson:
p. 19
Judith Wald:
p. 157
Kathryn Krone:
p. 89
Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, Texas:
p. 163
McCann Erickson:
p. 183
McDermott Library, The University of Texas:
pp. 205
,
206
Ogilvy & Mather:
pp. 35
(left),
38
,
39
(top right and bottom left),
42
,
43
,
45
PLR IP Holdings, LLC:
pp. 78
,
79
Talon International:
pp. 152
,
153
The Hertz Corporation:
pp. 142
,
143
The Procter & Gamble Company:
p. 197
Viyella:
p. 39
(top left)
Volkswagen Zubehör:
pp. 94
,
95
,
98
(top and bottom left),
99
(top)
Volvo Car Corporation:
p. 136
.
Wisconsin Historical Society:
p. 35
(right)
Young & Rubicam:
p. 179
Figures featured on the endpapers include: FrontâBill Bernbach, Gene Case, DDB, Amil Gargano, Helmut Krone, Jeff Metzner, PKL, Jack Tinker, Judith Wald, Bob Wilvers, Young & Rubicam, and Bernie Zlotnick. Backâ21 Club, Carl Ally, Jerry Della Femina, Carl Fischer, Gilbert Advertising, George Lois Ron Rosenfeld, and Young & Rubicam.
With thanks to the following for supplying endpaper images: Carl Fischer, Amil Gargano, Kathryn Krone, Bob Kuperman, George Lois, McCann Erickson, Judith Wald, and Bernie Zlotnick, 21 Club, DDB Worldwide Communication Group Inc., El Al Israel Airlines, Carl Fischer, Richard Gilbert, George Lois, Judith Wald, Bernie Zlotnick.
MAD
MEN
THE RENEGADES OF MADISON AVENUE AND THE GOLDEN AGE OF ADVERTISING
ANDREW CRACKNELL
FOREWORD BY SIR JOHN HEGARTY
HOW TRUE IS MAD MEN? BY FRED DANZIG
To the gentle Dan Levin, my group head at CDP, because he gave me my first break, taught me with immense skill and patience, and set me on the road; because he introduced me to the US advertising of this era and explained its importance; and a little because in 1967 he had an E Type Jaguar and that was all the incentive I needed. Sadly he died in October 2010.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
In his 1964 novel
The Advertising Man
, Jack Dillon makes one passing reference to those then employed in advertising on New York's Madison Avenue as “Mad Men.” Apart from that, I found no evidence that the expression was in any sort of use until the AMC series of that name. For that reason, and to avoid confusion, throughout this book the phrase will refer only to people, events, attitudes, and images in the TV drama and not the world of 1960s New York advertising.
All quoted material is either referenced directly in the text, or can be found in the sources provided at the back of the book.
BY SIR JOHN HEGARTY
A
dvertising is a wonderful business in that it recognizes talent very quickly. It applauds it, rewards it, and promotes it. The only problem is, it also forgets it very quickly.
The word “history” in our industry is almost a dirty word. We're obsessed with tomorrow and the next big thing. In many ways that's what makes it so exciting. Constant invention is at its core. Creativity is, after all, about breaking something down and putting something new in its place.
But sometimes this can work against it. I was lucky enough to be taught history by an inspirational teacher who's mantra was “history isn't about the past, it's about the future.” Understanding where we came from, why we did what we did, and how it could influence tomorrow was at the heart of his teaching.
It is this that makes this book so special.
Yes, it is about the past. It's about a moment in time when everything changed and modern advertising was born. It will make you laugh and wonder at the characters that inhabit these pages, and teach you how to recognize true creativity as opposed to the illusion of it.
It will also give you an insight in how to run a creative company, and make sure it continues to be successfulâBernbach's brilliantly insightful letter to his staff about the dangers of bigness and conformity should be plastered across the walls of any creative organization. Not that this is a “how to” book. Far from it. But like any great story it carries within it lessons that go beyond the intended narrative.
Andrew Cracknell's writing captures the passion, madness, and mayhem that is all part of a creative revolution; the courage and determination it takes to succeed and, most of all, how to conjure magic out of nothing.
Y
ou don't have to be an adman to love the Creative Revolution. All that's required is an appreciation of how Madison Avenue's ad agencies veered from “hard sell” advertising in the 1960s, abandoning brain-jarring repetition and hyperbole, creating instead a softer, more colloquial “selling” premise. Radiating good taste, humor, “real”-looking people, and down-to-earth copy, their amiable messages began relating more directly to real everyday life in America.
Cut to July 2007, and the debut of the AMC cable network's
Mad Men
series, billed as a serious recreation of Madison Avenue in the sixties, when the Creative Revolution was reenergizing ad agencies. Most admen who survived that decade and tuned in to
Mad Men
were hoping it would reflect the energy that was coursing through the business during that decade. But the TV version instead focuses on a fictitious “new” agency, Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, that is curiously immune to the energizing creative work going on all around it at smaller, less stuffy “start-ups.”
Mad Men
did succeed, however, in opening memory floodgates; veteran Creative Revolution pioneers were asked to reminisce, and now, in these pages, Andrew Cracknell brings them together to provide the real-life details and contrasts to the
Mad Men
storyline. With the back stories of landmark ad campaigns here, we witness a shift from musty old agency dos and don'ts (i.e., “leave room in the ad for the logo”) to the challenging “fresh ideas only” approach. Agency writers and artists, no longer confined to separate cubicles, would henceforth work together as teams, in one office.
