Q&A - Don Draper: Hot Creative Tackles Business Industry -- and What Lies Ahead
When it comes to up-and-coming stars in advertising, one clear leader is Don Draper of Sterling Cooper. Mr. Draper, 36, who recently was named partner in addition to creative director of the New York-based agency, has spent eight years in advertising, including six at his current shop. He is credited with Sterling Cooper's innovative Lucky Strike campaign earlier this year and just wiped out the competition for Kodak's new slide projector with his "Carousel" concept. In addition, he was responsible for the agency's hire of Herman "Duck" Phillips as head of account services. In a recent interview with ADVERTISING AGE reporter Julie Liesse, Mr. Draper discussed Sterling Cooper's recent account wins and losses as well as his new role at the agency and what to expect in the future.
Ad Age: It has been a roller-coaster year for Sterling Cooper and for you personally. Your agency has had a couple of high-profile account wins recently--Kodak and Clearasil--but also lost Dr. Scholl's. You have won awards and have a new role at Sterling Cooper as partner and creative director. But overriding everything has been the health of Roger Sterling. What do you think about the year your agency has had, and what do you forecast for the coming year?
Don Draper: It has been quite a year, but I don't want to give the impression that things are unstable at Sterling Cooper. We continue to bring in new business and offer an alternative to larger firms by providing cutting-edge creative.
Ad Age: How is Mr. Sterling doing? Do you anticipate his return to the agency soon?
Mr. Draper: Why? What have you heard? Roger's in perfect health. Roger is recovering nicely and has worked as hard as he ever has.
Ad Age: How have your clients reacted to the absence of Mr. Sterling from day-to-day business? For instance, he is especially close to your Lucky Strike client.
Mr. Draper: Roger has always entrusted me with the Lucky Strike account, and during his brief vacation, I've tried to keep Lucky Strike happy in Roger's inimitable style.
Ad Age: What is your working relationship with Bert Cooper? He has a reputation as a tough boss but also a, well, unique personality.
Mr. Draper: I'd be lying if I didn't say Bert Cooper is a character. But I feel lucky to work with him; and, let's face it, he's a legend.
Ad Age: In a high-profile move, you just recently landed Duck Phillips as your head of client services. Why did you go outside the agency for this position? How is Mr. Phillips adjusting to life back in New York and at Sterling Cooper?
Mr. Draper: Duck Phillips is a thoroughbred. The better question is, can our team live up to his expectations? But I can say so far, so good.
Ad Age: Some in the industry have characterized Sterling Cooper as a "mom and pop" agency; others have pegged it as amore traditional agency compared to today's hot creative shops, such as DDB and BBDO. How would you describe your agency's niche on Madison Avenue?
Mr. Draper: Pretty much when you look at Madison Ave. right now, it's a battle between the dinosaurs and the Tinkerbells. Sterling Cooper is steeped in tradition while still being able to take chances, and that's all about overhead. We're not going to be bankrupted by the next fad.
Ad Age: Many in the ad business were impressed by your "Jesus Over Rio" campaign as well as your "Mark Your Man" ads for Belle Jolie. How would you describe Sterling Cooper's creative philosophy?
Mr. Draper: I'd like to think that our work springs from somewhere deep in the heart of our artists. We try to be mirrors for consumers. Of course, there's another art, and that's getting ideas past clients. So we try to be practical.
Ad Age: Your clients love you and your work. Joe Harriman and Lynn Taylor at Kodak can't say enough nice things about you. The head of a rival agency says your client United Fruit practically thinks you invented the banana--your creative insights have been so valuable to the Chiquita brand. What is the secret of your success as an adman?
Mr. Draper: I've been very lucky. I have a great team. And most important, I believe in research. Personal, one-on-one research--not the stuff that comes from reports. You'd be surprised what you can learn about tobacco sales from talking to a busboy.
Ad Age: As advertising increasingly moves beyond magazines, newspapers, billboards and radio to television commercials, how does your job change? How do you think this new medium, television, will change the way advertising talks to consumers--and how will it affect advertising in general?
Mr. Draper: Well the first thing I've noticed, it seems to be more about show business, not just putting ads into television shows without irritating viewers. But the ads themselves have to tell stories, have music, have striking images, be entertaining--maybe even more entertaining than the shows. It's going to be a tough one.
Ad Age: One of your cornerstone clients, Lucky Strike, just lost a major lawsuit and faces the prospect of increased government regulation of the tobacco industry, including possible health warnings on cigaret packages. How does all this change the creative challenge of marketing cigarets? What do you predict for the near future of the tobacco industry?
Mr. Draper: Right now it seems like a lot of hysteria. As far as the future goes, I don't see a reason to change anything. Prohibition was 30 years ago. I think the government's interference will have similar success.
Ad Age: You have a broad portfolio of clients, including not only Lucky Strike but also Maytag, Bethlehem Steel and some top package-goods brands such as Right Guard and Clearasil. What other categories of advertisers would you like to pursue as clients in the coming year?
Mr. Draper: We've been very successful at getting smaller divisions of big companies. Right now we're really trying to land a whale. We have Clearasil, but we'd like a shot at their parent, Vicks, and obviously we'd like some other clients as big as Lucky Strike: a major airline, an automobile. Everyone must give the same answer to this question, am I wrong?
Ad Age: It's no secret that you were wooed this year by other, bigger shops. Why did you decide to stay at Sterling Cooper?
Mr. Draper: Sterling Cooper has always taken care of me, financially and creatively, and maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I've tried to reward that with my loyalty.
Ad Age: The word on the street is that your wife is a former model and was considered for a role in a Coca-Cola campaign this year. Are you looking to be an advertising wonder couple--behind and in front of the camera?
Mr. Draper: It's true I've been blessed with a beautiful wife. But she's made it clear she has no intention of giving up her life as the world's happiest housewife.
Ad Age: Other Madison Avenue shops, notably J. Walter Thompson, are promoting more and more women in their creative departments. What do you think of the future of women in the ad industry?
Mr. Draper: I don't really think of the industry as coming from men or women. Either someone gets it or they don't. There is a generation of women coming up right now who seem more ambitious and more logical than emotional, and that's useful. We'll see what happens, but we've definitely started moving in that direction. But I'd like to think it's more about ideas than anything--the right person for the right product.
Ad Age: It's a new decade. The U.S. has a young, inspirational new president, and consumers are feeling good about the economy. How do you view the decade ahead for the ad business?
Mr. Draper: I don't think too much about the future. I was born in the Great Depression, and I know consumer confidence is a shaky horse to hitch your wagon to. We've made a lot of money in the '50s without much effort. Same thing in the '20s. I don't know where advertising's going, but it's not leaving.
(NOTE: The above interview originally ran as part of a 16-page special section in the June 23, 2008 issue of Advertising Age. To view the entire feature, click here.)
"I was born in the Great Depression"....impossible.
The Great Depression started October 29, 1929 and ran through about 1939.
If Don is age 36 in 1960 or even in 1962, he was born in 1924 or 1926, during the very prosperous years of the "Roaring Twenties".
Rather, Don "grew up" during the Great Depression. On a farm, it would have been a very hard life, but at least they had food to eat.
@bocaraton fan:
I completely agree with you. If Don Draper is 36 in 1960, then why didn't he serve in World War II, instead of Korea? If his home life was so bad, and he really wanted to get away, signing up for service during WWII, would have been a no-brainer. He'd have been 18 in 1942, right after Pearl Harbor--when there were the most recruits. If he wanted to flee his home, there was no better time for him to have done it. Why did he wait until 1950, when he would have been 26 according to that timeline. Hell, at 26, why was he still living at home anyway--especially if it was such an awful place?
Excellent point. He'd have to be some kind of sad sack loser to hang around a miserable farm town until age 26 or 28 and then finally enlist in Korea, the war which started 6/25/1950 and ran until July 1953. Presumably with no education, either. How would he then instantly transform himself from a bumpkin into a cool, polished, wordly, urbane ad man savvy enough to rise to Madison Avenue?
"Mr. Draper, 36, who recently was named partner in addition to creative director of the New York-based agency, has spent eight years in advertising, including six at his current shop." If the article is set in 1960 he started in advertising in 1952; if set in 1962, he started in 1954.
The only thing I can think of, is that he has a "double hidden past" - he was somewhere other than the farm (albeit under the name Dick Whitman) before going to Korea, assuming the dead Don Draper's identity, and starting life in NYC advertising. Maybe the pre-Korea Dick Whitman was also running from something, not just life on the farm. Remember that photo "Dick and Adam 1944" - he was clearly a grown man. Either that or the writers suck at chronology and factual continuity.
So were the 2 years prior to SC spent in the place he met Betty ? Remember she met him as a model while he was working for a Fur company. That would make sense.
That would put her about 20,21 when they met.
Maybe in the war for less than a year ? Korea was from 1950-53 right ? So he could have gone in 1950 and jumped right into advertising in 51-52.
But the whole WW II/Korea thing just doesn't line up. His age entering the war ?
And maintaining the relationships with his fam until at least 1944.
Just kind of weird because his stepmother and her husband were waiting for his body. So there must have been some kind of connection still into the early 50's. So what was he running from in the 40's that allowed them to still have that connection ?
I hope hope hope it is not a problem with the writing chronologically and the continuity.
Let's see. His daughter turned seven during season one (1960). Don and Betty married because she was pregnant, putting the marriage not later than 1953 when he was working for the furrier. The fur coat he got for her may be the reason he left that firm and wound up at S-C. He was at S-C not later than 1955. Midge mentions in the first episode about his working around the earlier tobacco crisis five years earlier.
In 1944 he was at least a well-grown teenager, figure sixteen. So in 1953 he would have married at age 25. A reasonable age. Drafted at age 20 for Korea, going there in 1951. In and out in less than a year including hospital time. Two years maximum before marriage.
Birthday probably around 1928-29, the cusp of the Depression. On farms it was already the Depression. It just didn't hit the cities until 1930.
Ritt, we don't need to use his daughter's age to determine Don's birthdate, etc. He is 36 in 1960, therefore born in 1924. The Depression did not start on farms before the stock market crash on 10/29/1929 ("Black Tuesday"). It was the city dwellers who started jumping out of office building windows that day, and with the collapse of the financial markets, the run on banks and their collapse (no federally insured bank accounts!), the farmers were then affected. Unless a farmer was mortgaged and lost his land to foreclosure, he could subsist because he could at least grow and raise his own food. There was just very little money being made. That's why city people went into the country looking for a meal and a place to sleep. My father was born on a farm shortly after Black Tuesday and lived through it.
If Don's daughter turns 7 in summer 1960, she was born summer 1953 and conceived in fall 1952. Don and Betty married in late 1952 or early 1953. If Betty is 28 in 1960, she was 21 when the daughter was born.
@kdb100273
"Maybe in the war for less than a year ? Korea was from 1950-53 right ? So he could have gone in 1950 and jumped right into advertising in 51-52."
This is not possible based on some hints in the Korean War flashbacks.
Here's why: The real Lt. Don Draper was wearing the shoulder sleeve insignia of the 40th Division. This insignia is plainly visible in the scene where Draper and Whitman are in the foxhole before and during the shelling and gasoline accident. This patch is a yellow sunburst design on a blue square background. The 40th Division -- while activated in California in 1950 -- was not deployed to Korea until January of 1952. The first echelon arrived at Pusan on the 7th of January and didn't reach the front lines until the 24th of that month. This deployment was to relieve the 24th Division. The Korean War scenes were clearly NOT taking place during a Korean winter, so the earliest Whitman could have arrived in Korea and taken his position with the real Don Draper behind the lines (based on what is depicted in the flashback) would have been late spring of 1952.
There are other subtle hints to be had with Whitman's uniform. The style of boots he is wearing were not worn by the US Army in 1950. The 8th Army (which fought in Korea) was still using leftover equipment from WWII in 1950, and the style of boot that Whitman is wearing did not appear until later. In 1950, infantrymen would have been wearing M43 double buckle boots or "shoe-pacs" -- both of which were late WWII vintage. Whitman appears to be wearing what would have been referred to as "Mickey Mouse Boots" by KW soldiers.
I think the writer(s) mixed up their facts on Korea, but I think the general ambiguity of these scenes are completely intentional. We are seeing snapshots are from Whitman/Draper's memory, and our insight could, thus, easily be clouded, as he clearly suffers from some degree of PTSD.
How Whitman/Draper's involvement in Korea fits into the overall timeline is sketchy, at best.
Correction to my above comment: Whitman was not wearing "mickey mouse boots" in the KW scenes. If memory serves me correctly these were white. Whitman was wearing what appeared to be russet combat boots (like the WWII paratrooper Corcoran Jump Boot) dyed black.
Hard to tell -- could have been a costuming gaffe.
Hi
Hi all- RE the continuity of age...I think Dick Whitman is actually about 30 years old in 1960- making him 20 in 1950 and the younger brother Adam 9 or 10 at the time of the train scene with the "fake" remains. I think when Dick Whitman assumed Don Drapers' identidy he knew he would not pass for 13 years older than he was, so he split the difference. That would explain why he was too young to fight in WW2. If he added six years to his fake age he could have then added a fake college education & a lot of things to his fabricated background.
It leaves lots open to discover in subsequent seasons.
It could also expain the reluctance to go to a publicly heald Ad company where the executives may be vetted more rigorously than at eccentric Coopers' shop. You get the impression Cooper could care less about the past of a high performing worker.
I'm surprised at all the nitpicking about chronological details that are utterly irrelevant to the greatness of Mad Men, the brilliance of the series's writers, and the splendid acting of the cast. These insignificant "inconsistencies" matter about as much as the longstanding (and equally trivial) disputes about Hamlet's precise age (is he 30? Well then, what's a 30-year still doing in college?!) or the exact date of The Creation as calculated to the year and day based on microscopic analysis of a few references in Genesis.
These objections remind me of the myopic fixations of some clients I've dealt with during my own long career as a copywriter with a major agency. What's important about Mad Men is its incredibly--and painfully--accurate portrayal of what life in the advertising business is really like. It gives me flashbacks--as it does every one of my former colleagues (and--call us masochists, if you wish--we all watch every episode).
Hey, friends, just relax and enjoy this superbly concepted, written, directed, produced, and acted drama, okay? Or, if you can't, then change the channel watch some lesser, lighter, shallow alternative.
Hope you're not planning on leaving early tonight, because we're going to need at least five strong concepts for the internal presentation in my office tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock sharp!
Ok, I just have to say that if any of you payed any attention what-so-ever, you would realize that this is set in 1966-1967. The new cadillac he bought was a 1967 which the dealer himself said right away. So if he's 36 now, that would put it at about 1930-1931 when he was born which would've for sure put his birth in the middle of the Great Depression. I just wanted to clear that up for those of you who missed it and are trying to point out flaws in the script that aren't flaws at all.
If anyone had bothered to click on the Advertising Age link they would have seen that the date of the issue with the interview was June 23, 1960.
dixie3: The car dealer says that the car is a 1962 model and the real-life historical events portrayed in the series— John Glenn's Mercury-Atlas 6 mission, the American Airlines Flight 1 crash, Marilyn Monroe's death — set the second season in 1962.
thulsa_doom315: Because Mad Men is about an adman in the late '50s(1960 was the last year of the '50s)/early '60s and not a Korean Conflict drama. I don't think they put the usual detail into the Korea flashback scenes as they do in the main scenes.
In "Nixon vs Kennedy" Pete tells Cooper that the real Don Draper died in 1950.
Dick Whitman has been lying about who he is for a decade, so it's very likely that he'd offer up mostly lies when giving information about Don Draper. Saying he was born during the Great Depression could be a slip-up, a lie or simply a writer's error.
There's a lot of Don's past yet to be revealed.
More about Don's past in the thread Don's Fishy Backstory
Don Draper is trying to stay above water. He must be very intelligent to keep up with all the lies. Heck, he chose a profession that is partially about lies.
I agree that we should not get too nit-picky about some details. The show is entertaining. Many of us try to guess about what the title of an episode will mean before it airs. I find this wonderful.
I live in Oklahoma and am told by many in my Church that the depression started in the 1920's for many farmers and businesses. By the time the stock market failed, many in the heart land had to already sale their stock just to survive. Many of them were better off for that. One lady said her father selling was because of a medical concern that turned out not to be as expensive as anticipated. The money never went back to the bank. Helped their family a bit. She said when she saw "Splendor In The Grass" she wondered if the main charactor's dad had kept money in the mattress too.
Don Draper is trying to stay above water. He must be very intelligent to keep up with all the lies. Heck, he chose a profession that is partially about lies.
I agree that we should not get too nit-picky about some details. The show is entertaining. Many of us try to guess about what the title of an episode will mean before it airs. I find this wonderful.
I live in Oklahoma and am told by many in my Church that the depression started in the 1920's for many farmers and businesses. By the time the stock market failed, many in the heart land had to already sale their stock just to survive. Many of them were better off for that. One lady said her father selling was because of a medical concern that turned out not to be as expensive as anticipated. The money never went back to the bank. Helped their family a bit. She said when she saw "Splendor In The Grass" she wondered if the main charactor's dad had kept money in the mattress too.
Like Don said, "you either get it, or you don't". Nothing 'remembered' by a man living under an assumed identity, who's day-to-day life is one thing from one point of view, and entirely different from another, can be taken at face value as being at all factual, in any objective sense. They simply are...what they are, as Don is. They transcend 'facts', possessing their own unique 'truth' (however referential), and speak to the objective of nothing except the actor and the acts themselves.
One would do well to remember the flashbacks are Don's...not those of some indifferent (and putatively 'objective') observer.
We're talking about Draper here folks...OK?
Like Don said, "you either get it, or you don't". Nothing 'remembered' by a man living under an assumed identity, who's day-to-day life is one thing from one point of view, and entirely different from another, can be taken at face value as being at all factual, in any objective sense. They simply are...what they are, as Don is. They transcend 'facts', possessing their own unique 'truth' (however referential), and speak to the objective of nothing except the actor and the acts themselves.
One would do well to remember the flashbacks are Don's...not those of some indifferent (and putatively 'objective') observer.
We're talking about Draper here folks...OK?
I agree with Uh...Bob. I think it was a slip-up on Draper's part. Whitman was born during the depression, but the real Don Draper was several years older. The writer's can use this slip-up in the future if someone questions the quote or is digging into his background. But Don can just explain it away meaning he 'remembers' the depression, bla bla bla.
Don as assumed the identity of someone older and can't always be expected to live up to that fact.
There was the draft in WW2. I don't know how he would have avoided the draft. Maybe he did fight in ww2, some of those guys still had to serve again. My cousin did.. he went at the end of the ww and then had to serve again.