Even downunder, we knew the Madness

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday, May 21, 2015

Who would have thought, eight years ago, that viewers could be enthralled by the doings of an advertising agency? Sure, for years we watched dramatisations of cop shops, newspaper and TV empires, even law firms. But an advertising agency?

Well this show put the spotlight on the renaissance in advertising of the late 60s, especially at its spiritual heart, Madison Avenue. The home of the Mad Men.

As a young blood in a colonial outpost, New York did not feel so far away to me. Besides, the thrills and spills of Mad Men the TV show, that played its final episode this week, were more than matched in distant Oz.

Remember the time when Stirling Cooper won the John Deere account, and celebrated by driving a mini tractor through the office? It took me back to a day at the all-conquering Masius Wynn Williams, Melbourne, when a motor bike was offered as a competition prize. It was brought in for photography, shiny and new, and our most ardent motor bike lover, the chief writer, jumped on and roared around the agency office corridors. He could get away with it because he was our star writer - Peter Carey, now a New York professor and two-time Booker Prize winner.

They joked you could become a passive smoker just by watching a few episodes of the TV show. Well that's how it was. Every typewriter and drawing board had a spent volcano of cigarette buts beside it and I could name (but won't) some agencies where the smoke was more exotic.

Mad Men conveyed well the feeling of the era. Compared to other young people on the business ladder, we were well paid, well dressed (suits for the 'suits', 'trendy' for the creatives) and could afford flash cars. All the beautiful girls wanted to go to the ad parties or be a secretary in front of an account executive's office just like Joan Harris. This was before Twiggy, and girls still had curves.

The serious fact was that agencies had many more major roles held by women. A smart girl could progress faster and further in advertising than in industry or banking. When faced by sexism, ad girls could hold their own.

Enormous time, effort and money went into 'the presentation'. You could spend much of your time working on speculative campaigns that would never see the public. Mock TV commercials were filmed, research was commissioned, elaborate strategies planned - only to have the client decide on your opponent's campaign, which of course you then told each other could not be as good as yours.

Mad Men captured this mood well - the disappointment of waiting for your campaign's approval only to read in the trade press that the opposition would be appointed. Or the ecstasy of getting that phone call telling your team 'we've won!'

A lot depended on the presenter. Someone like Don Draper could capture the client and thrill him into giving you the account on the spot. Remember when he invented 'Carousel' as the name for Kodak's new slide projector? The presentation and campaign almost ignored the technical features but homed in on the audience's emotional response to their family memories.

Here in Australia there were a number of creative chiefs as powerful with their images, and they were the winners in the advertising race. They were first and foremost salesmen - John Singleton, Philip Adams, John Clemenger, Bryce Courtenay. And they made themselves millionaires with the skill.