(originally written for ALARM Magazine in July 2008)
“Advertising is based on one thing: happiness. And you know what happiness is? Happiness is the smell of a new car.” -Don Draper
The cast of AMC’s Mad Men were the darlings of this year’s Television Critic’s Association summer press tour. Set at a Madison Avenue advertising agency in 1960, fawning critics have hailed this drama as the second coming of The Sopranos, much to the delight of creator (and former Sopranos producer) Matt Weiner. Many critics have credited the success of the show to his carefully nuanced characters and obsessive attention to period detail. The acting is electric, the writing phenomenal, and the production design superb. The show is stacked to the rafters with wonderful subtext about gender and family dynamics, about race and class, about work and social status – about pretty much every aspect of American life at a pivotal time in our history. And, as the occupation of the show’s central characters, it also has a lot to say about advertising.
The most striking things everyone notices immediately about the offices Sterling Cooper are that everyone is constantly smoking and drinking, and that women are almost universally expected to occupy a role somewhere to the conservative side of June Cleaver.
But, putting aside some of those weightier themes for a moment, it’s fascinating to see how the series portrays the actual work of the “Mad Men,” a 60’s-era nickname for Madison Avenue ad men. The cavalier manner with which they conjure the hopes and dreams of a newly affluent nation does a lot to romanticize their profession. Their job was to look at the world around them and figure out what people wanted or, more accurately, what people didn’t even know they wanted. Scrawling ideas on cocktail napkins over an Old Fashioned (whiskey, water, sugar, bitters, and some orange peel served over ice), throwing the latest research right in the waste basket, and waxing philosophical about consumers “emotional connection” to a product – these men acted like cowboys and lived like kings. The best of the best weren’t crunching numbers, they were gliding along on intuition, creativity and guts, living and dying by their next great idea.
Again, this is definitely a romanticized version of the story, but it’s still an understatement to say that advertising has changed a lot since the 1960’s. In the first episode of the series, up-and-comer Pete Campbell refers to “the burgeoning field of research,” and oh, how the field did burgeon. Over the next two decades the media landscape became more crowded, consumers more jaded, and production much costlier. Companies were increasingly interested in quantifying the results of their ballooning ad budgets. Advertising, once a cunning game of guile played by a handful of seedy masters in smoke-filled rooms, was now more like a giant math problem. The influence of calculated audience impressions, focus groups, and market research became more dominate in the industry.
The evolution of television ratings is an excellent example of this progression. In the days of the big three networks, what mattered most was audience share – what percentage of the total TV audience a network captured. The math was simple: if it wasn’t at least a third of the audience, that was bad. Then cable came along and fragmented the audience dramatically, which lead to a further increase in the importance of demographics. Though highly rated shows still garner large ad dollars today, advertisers are less interested how many people are watching, and more concerned with who those people are and how much money they have. Age, gender, race, and income matter more and more to advertisers, and so the math problem of advertising has become even further complicated.
The most recent development in this saga is the adoption “C3” ratings. DVR recording systems like TiVo have become more common in the last few years, but until recently, ratings were still based on who was watching a show when it was broadcast. This obviously began to erode ratings, since all of the sudden no one counted viewers who recorded a show and watched it later. TV networks argued that advertisers had to recognize viewer playback. Ad agencies argued that those people fast-forwarded through commercials and shouldn’t be counted at all. After tense negotiations, the C3 standard was born. Ratings now factor in three days of DVR playback, but are based on how many people are actually watching the commercials rather than the show itself. Networks obviously want you to watch their shows, but as far as their bottom line is concerned, it now only matters if you watch the commercials too.
This brings about a lot of interesting problems for both networks and advertisers. In addition to attracting audiences with quality programming, networks now pay a lot of attention to retaining those audiences through commercial breaks. This is why you’ll see more and more bits of show content appear in the middle of a break, and more emphasis on product placement. But most of that happens on the network side. So, what are advertisers doing to keep viewers tuned-in to watch their commercials?
The short answer is: not much. Though there is plenty of demand from Madison Avenue for different kinds of advertising opportunities these days, most of which amount to methods of tricking viewers into sticking around for a commercial, the fact remains that most people tune out during commercial breaks because they don’t want to watch commercials. And let’s face it, most commercials just aren’t very good. Agencies spend billions of dollars buying media to target the precise viewer they want to see their product, and what you see if you pause your DVR for a moment is apparently the best they can do with that investment.
From the network point of view there are two solutions to this problem. If poor commercials are affecting ratings, then either advertisers should pay a higher price for ads that are driving away viewers, or a higher standard of quality must be applied to ads that a network will accept. Since the first option leaves no one happy, the answer seems obvious: we need better ads.
I’m not saying we should bring back the misogyny and three-martini lunches portrayed in Mad Men, but perhaps there were once elements of passion, boldness, and creativity to advertising that are missing today. At its best, advertising should be art and science, and it seems that there is less emphasis on the former today than in years past. Though research has come a long way in pinning down exactly who advertisers want to reach, it can’t reach them alone. After all, can you really quantify the smell of a new car?
“Advertising is based on one thing: happiness. And you know what happiness is? Happiness is the smell of a new car.” -Don Draper
The cast of AMC’s Mad Men were the darlings of this year’s Television Critic’s Association summer press tour. Set at a Madison Avenue advertising agency in 1960, fawning critics have hailed this drama as the second coming of The Sopranos, much to the delight of creator (and former Sopranos producer) Matt Weiner. Many critics have credited the success of the show to his carefully nuanced characters and obsessive attention to period detail. The acting is electric, the writing phenomenal, and the production design superb. The show is stacked to the rafters with wonderful subtext about gender and family dynamics, about race and class, about work and social status – about pretty much every aspect of American life at a pivotal time in our history. And, as the occupation of the show’s central characters, it also has a lot to say about advertising.
The most striking things everyone notices immediately about the offices Sterling Cooper are that everyone is constantly smoking and drinking, and that women are almost universally expected to occupy a role somewhere to the conservative side of June Cleaver.
But, putting aside some of those weightier themes for a moment, it’s fascinating to see how the series portrays the actual work of the “Mad Men,” a 60’s-era nickname for Madison Avenue ad men. The cavalier manner with which they conjure the hopes and dreams of a newly affluent nation does a lot to romanticize their profession. Their job was to look at the world around them and figure out what people wanted or, more accurately, what people didn’t even know they wanted. Scrawling ideas on cocktail napkins over an Old Fashioned (whiskey, water, sugar, bitters, and some orange peel served over ice), throwing the latest research right in the waste basket, and waxing philosophical about consumers “emotional connection” to a product – these men acted like cowboys and lived like kings. The best of the best weren’t crunching numbers, they were gliding along on intuition, creativity and guts, living and dying by their next great idea.
Again, this is definitely a romanticized version of the story, but it’s still an understatement to say that advertising has changed a lot since the 1960’s. In the first episode of the series, up-and-comer Pete Campbell refers to “the burgeoning field of research,” and oh, how the field did burgeon. Over the next two decades the media landscape became more crowded, consumers more jaded, and production much costlier. Companies were increasingly interested in quantifying the results of their ballooning ad budgets. Advertising, once a cunning game of guile played by a handful of seedy masters in smoke-filled rooms, was now more like a giant math problem. The influence of calculated audience impressions, focus groups, and market research became more dominate in the industry.
The evolution of television ratings is an excellent example of this progression. In the days of the big three networks, what mattered most was audience share – what percentage of the total TV audience a network captured. The math was simple: if it wasn’t at least a third of the audience, that was bad. Then cable came along and fragmented the audience dramatically, which lead to a further increase in the importance of demographics. Though highly rated shows still garner large ad dollars today, advertisers are less interested how many people are watching, and more concerned with who those people are and how much money they have. Age, gender, race, and income matter more and more to advertisers, and so the math problem of advertising has become even further complicated.
The most recent development in this saga is the adoption “C3” ratings. DVR recording systems like TiVo have become more common in the last few years, but until recently, ratings were still based on who was watching a show when it was broadcast. This obviously began to erode ratings, since all of the sudden no one counted viewers who recorded a show and watched it later. TV networks argued that advertisers had to recognize viewer playback. Ad agencies argued that those people fast-forwarded through commercials and shouldn’t be counted at all. After tense negotiations, the C3 standard was born. Ratings now factor in three days of DVR playback, but are based on how many people are actually watching the commercials rather than the show itself. Networks obviously want you to watch their shows, but as far as their bottom line is concerned, it now only matters if you watch the commercials too.
This brings about a lot of interesting problems for both networks and advertisers. In addition to attracting audiences with quality programming, networks now pay a lot of attention to retaining those audiences through commercial breaks. This is why you’ll see more and more bits of show content appear in the middle of a break, and more emphasis on product placement. But most of that happens on the network side. So, what are advertisers doing to keep viewers tuned-in to watch their commercials?
The short answer is: not much. Though there is plenty of demand from Madison Avenue for different kinds of advertising opportunities these days, most of which amount to methods of tricking viewers into sticking around for a commercial, the fact remains that most people tune out during commercial breaks because they don’t want to watch commercials. And let’s face it, most commercials just aren’t very good. Agencies spend billions of dollars buying media to target the precise viewer they want to see their product, and what you see if you pause your DVR for a moment is apparently the best they can do with that investment.
From the network point of view there are two solutions to this problem. If poor commercials are affecting ratings, then either advertisers should pay a higher price for ads that are driving away viewers, or a higher standard of quality must be applied to ads that a network will accept. Since the first option leaves no one happy, the answer seems obvious: we need better ads.
I’m not saying we should bring back the misogyny and three-martini lunches portrayed in Mad Men, but perhaps there were once elements of passion, boldness, and creativity to advertising that are missing today. At its best, advertising should be art and science, and it seems that there is less emphasis on the former today than in years past. Though research has come a long way in pinning down exactly who advertisers want to reach, it can’t reach them alone. After all, can you really quantify the smell of a new car?
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