Playgroup | Helping brands build genuine brand equity

Gus Mackinnon

Group Creative Director

Loves: Shepherds Pie, Punk Rock, Explosions
Hates: Thought for the day, Carol Vorderman, Cucumber
Inspired by:
- Gregory Crewdson
- We Feel Fine
- Yugop
My links:
- www.playgroup.com

futuristic, market, Snaps, Heineken, skyscrapers, Design, Women, goals, tomorrow, Bratz, weight loss, future, brand, 360 degrees, Cadbury, Beck's, Barbie, Guilt, consumer, Dubai, Dairy Milk, Art, digital, lifestyle, Olympics BitTorrent television Beijing Britain, RCA, prospects, concepts, Beer, Weight Watchers

Mad Men

05 Mar

The brilliant first episode of the new AMC series Mad Men aired last Sunday night, but are these dinosaurs of the ad industry still roaming the earth?

Mad Men

Set in a New York advertising agency in the sixties the recurrent themes seem to be smoking, boozing, sexism, and mass manipulation.

Secretaries are goosed indiscriminately, a client gets short shrift for being a woman, and the ad executives tip back the whisky before the big pitch. All vignettes from a distant era. Or are they?

Take away the pomade and the typewriters and the agency stereotypes still stick- they've just shape shifted a bit. Sexism in the workplace is still rife but less overt, drink has been replaced by powdered stimulants and oligarchic attitudes still pervade within the advertising industry.

As traditional ad agencies still scrabble to get to grips with digital and the democratisation of the consumer, Mad Men's retro styling actually looks like a thin veneer over the present.

http://www.amctv.com/originals/madmen/

Posted by Gus on 05 Mar 08, at 6:05 pm