The Legitamacy of Mad Men

After taking Survey of Advertising last summer, my teacher got me hooked on the AMC show Mad Men. Although I was being introduced to advertising as a whole, I feel like from the moment I started to watch the show, that I was beginning to learn  about how advertising in America has progressed throughout the years. And after watching the behind the scenes specials, etc. it is clear that creator of the show really has to do his homework to make the show seem realistic to the time he wants to portray. Although this may be true, it seems as though some believe the show to be an inaccurate portrayal of the ad industry. With these mixed reviews arise many questions as well.

But after watching the show for a few seasons and taking more and more advertising classes the other day when we were watching Art & Copy, an ad that was shown actually made me think of Mad Men. A few weeks ago in an episode Don Draper (the creative director) at the firm on the show was brainstorming with a copy writer, Peggy, for ideas for an ad about the Samsonite American Tourister Luggage Collection. The actual TV ad that ran for Samsonite in the 1970's was shown in Art & Copy, depicting a suitcase being thrown into a gorilla cage. Although what Don and Peggy discussed in Mad Men was not the exact same thing as the real commercial that ran, they did overlap in a way. This really made me think that although many may not rely on a show like Mad Men as a historical source of evidence about the progression of advertising in America, it does indeed hold some truth. And for me personally it has helped me to better understand early advertising.

TV Commercial film for American Tourister Luggage 1970