The Digital Evolution Of The Mad Men Age

By: Dalia Abi Mosleh, Senior Manager – Strategic Marketing Investments at OMD UAE

An exquisite, unapologetic, dark yet witty show – 14 years later since its first release – Mad Men is still one of the greatest and most relatable shows ever created. Talking about the advertising and media industry, it is quite interesting to see how some things never changed since the 1960s while a lot of other aspects have evolved.

Mad Men was a term coined in the 1950s referring to the advertising men who worked at Madison Avenue. And while “Mad” was short for Madison, are the advertising/media/tech men in today’s world considered mad? Mad for data, mad for performance, mad for measurement, mad for conversions.

Taking a step back, I remember in the first season, when Paul Kinsey was showing Peggy Olson around the office, he introduced media as a department within the ad agency. The department that is solely focused on buying space on television, newspapers, billboards and radio. He went on to explain that “they don’t sell ideas, or campaigns or jingles”; adding to it the humor – and his frustration – of how creative was the window dressing that is thrown in for free with the media buys. And that is a quite interesting turn of events in today’s world where media agencies offer a whole lot more. And while media planning and buying remain their bread and butter, strategy, SEO, creative, performance, and analytics are only some of the services being offered to clients. 

This field has branched out to focus on elements beyond just advertising. In today’s world, data, attribution, optimization, and analytics are the terms we live by every day. Clients won’t even bother test something if it is not measured. They now seek data-driven solutions and want to know how every dollar invested can be optimized to yield better results. ROI is now crucial more than ever.

The Don Draper of the 21st century is not your typical ad agency creative director. Imagine walking into Don’s office and asking him for recommendation on key metrics for an app-install campaign or proposition of ad formats for a performance campaign on social media. He’d probably take a deep breath, pour a glass of scotch and ask you to come back when you’re able to talk more sense into the conversation. The advent of the social campaigns, for instance, has introduced new terms and rules into the advertising playbook. This includes terms such as “engagement”, “leads”, “click-through-rate”, “completed views”, etc.

Digital transformation has changed the rules of the game. Business intelligence and analytics are now considered simple modes of survival. Solutions such as building dashboards that include data engineering and data visualization – resulting in automated reporting where data is consolidated from multiple platforms, and performance of defined key metrics is visualized – are fundamental. In other words, a whole measurement framework is now imperative to ensure continuity. Change is the only constant indeed and agility or speed to market has become a key criterion for a business to sustain in today’s dynamic world.

On a talent level, hybridization rather than specialization is essential for survival. Being great at just one thing or having one skill isn’t enough anymore. Introduction of several new job titles such as data scientist, augmented reality expert, growth marketing manager, and innovation alchemist requires additional skillset that didn’t even exist before. And the market hasn’t been more competitive.

And finally, from a gender equality aspect, more and more women are filling in leadership positions as they are being given opportunities in several cases to showcase their knowledge and expertise. 

Having said the above, what is still relevant in advertising from the MM era?

1.     The art of storytelling is still powerful: Emotions and real stories of real people are what resonate. And today, it is more about story-doing rather than only storytelling. It is about feeding the need rather than feeding the feed. 

The Kodak Carousel pitch at the end of season 1 is a remarkable example. “Nostalgia: It’s delicate but potent. This device is not a spaceship; it’s a time machine,” Don said. “It goes backwards and forward, and it takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It’s not called the wheel; it’s called the carousel”. And while Kodak wanted to focus on the technological angle of the product, Don revealed the benefit and the authenticity of emotions; layering his words with photos of his own family as he took us on a journey down the memory lane. Agencies today aren’t bound to creating logos, artwork, and slogans. They continue to build a human connection with the audience.

2.     Pitches are still essential to every business: Whether it is for the purpose of retaining a client or winning a new one, pitches keep the momentum going. It allows agencies to defy their limits, redefine creativity, and open the door to other accounts too. One of the prominent quotes by Don Draper was “If you don’t like what’s being said, change the conversation.” This philosophy still dazzles clients in the various ways it is adopted.

3.     Psychology rules: It is true that Mad Men understood human behavior better than many shows actually did. And several creative pitches were won due to tying the product to a human need. “What you call love was invented by guys like me… to sell Nylons.” These words by Don were suggesting that “love” was created by the advertising industry in order to sell products, such as Nylons. The same notion applies to those who believe holidays such as Valentine’s Day were only invented to sell Hallmark Cards. Regardless of the truth behind this, the point here is that creating a need or building on one is still key in getting a home run. And Apple is one brand that does this flawlessly.

4.     Networking is key to success: In the show, we tend to see how the characters’ professional connections are much stronger than their personal relationships. And while this might or might not be true for some today, professional networking is extremely vital in nurturing existing relationships or building new ones, whether it is in the form of meetings, events, lunches or after-work drinks.

5.     Client-first mindset still wins: Assessing the strengths and weaknesses or risk vs. reward in any business is still part of the game. Putting the client first; be it in the approach of tackling new briefs or spending late nights at the office is something we still relate to. Keeping the flow of ideas coming over coffee, tea, or drinks is inevitable to delivering results for our clients.

Our ever-changing industry requires resilience and a strong vision. And while opportunities might be more available today, so is the supply of services from large to boutique agencies. Being at the forefront of new technologies and trends is inevitable and possessing the talent of agility, flexibility, and openness is vital for survival.