eROI Days Email Agency

With Ryan on vacation, he asked me to keep the ball rolling and take over eROI Days. So ask and you shall receive my friend.

Many of you loyal eROI Days readers out there may have seen this killer show called “Mad Men” on AMC. It’s my current favorite show now that I can’t see any new episodes of “The Wire.” Mad Men just started it’s 2nd season running Sundays on AMC, so that means you all have a first season to catch up on!

The main character of Mad Men is Don Draper, the Creative Director at a mid-sized NY agency called Sterling Cooper. Draper is at the forefront of the New Frontier of the early 1960’s, where he and his colleagues deal with everything from cigarette advertising — and those pesky new studies linking smoking to lung cancer — to the 1960 presidential campaign, with the ad men at Sterling Cooper approached by advisers to Richard Nixon.

Mad Men L to R - Pete (Account Exec.), Harry (Media Buyer), Don (Creative Director), Sal (Art Director), Roger (Head of Accounts), Paul (Copywriter)

I keep on thinking about how strikingly different agency life was back in early 60’s New York compared to 2008 in Portland. It’s hard to picture Portland being this chauvinist and shallow.  How much did the scene, styles and attitudes influence their creativity? I wish I could really know how Draper weighs his numerous professional successes versus the price he has paid to be where he is. I wasn’t exactly around in 1960, but I have heard that the show is supposed to be very realistic, and I can assure you Draper’s pitches are much more realistic than Brian Kinney on Queer as Folk, where Brian would just slap SEX on a product and collect a huge check. Mad Men is deeper than that.

But why get that deep in thought when you can just stare at Joan, the Sterling Cooper secretary. I guess that could be reason enough to want to sign on as a Copywriter at good ol’ SC.

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