The Real Mad Men by Andrew Cracknell Page B

$100—and a calendar. To my sons Rodney and Victor, who spent every dime I ever gave them on fancy cars and fast women… I leave $50—in dimes. To my business partner Jules, whose only motto was ‘spend, spend, spend’, I leave nothing, nothing, nothing. And to my other friends and relatives who also never learned the value of a dollar—I leave a dollar.” At the end of the procession we see a young man driving a VW Beetle, clearly upset. “And finally, to my nephew Harold, who oft times said ‘a penny saved is a penny earned’ and who also oft times said ‘Gee Uncle Max, it sure pays to own a Volkswagen’, I leave my entire fortune of one hundred billion dollars.”
    In another, “Snow Plow,” one of the consistently most admired TV ads of all time, principally for its simplicity, we see a car covered in snow traveling through heavy drifts to a shed where the driver gets out and opens the shed doors. We hear the roar of a powerful engine and he drives out on a snow plow. The voice-over says just twenty-seven words: “Have you ever wondered how the man who drives the snow plow—drives to the snow plow? This one drives a Volkswagen—so you can stop wondering.”
    Ad after ad after ad, the same playful self-deprecating wit, the same chatty, knowing but economical copy—and always the same instantly recognizable layout and look. Very few people ever appeared in the ads,there were almost never any props that weren’t directly part of the car and very rarely was it shown against anything other than a white background.

    Further DDB ads for VW, from 1963–80. VW advertising is still with DDB today.
    THE CAMPAIGN’S IMPACT goes way beyond just VW, DDB, and the New York advertising scene of the early sixties. This campaign, more than any individual ads or campaigns that had gone before, epitomizes the Creative Revolution, and that revolution changed the face of advertising. Ohrbach’s, Levy’s, El Al were all terrific pieces of work, but none of them was a nationally-advertised brand competing in a mainstream product category.
    Of course there had been people creating entertaining, witty, simple, and sympathetic advertising before, people who recognized a value in directness and candor. But they tended to be in isolated pockets and their efforts were easily snuffed out. They were shouted down by the orthodox who believed that empathy had no place in advertising; that anything other than the tried and tested was too risky; that any money spent on making friends with your potential customer was money wasted; that simple repetition, like the pounding of a jackhammer, was the most effective way to get a message to stick; that he who shouts loudest gets heard clearest; that more is more.
    These people will forever be confounded and bewildered by the early VW ads, wondering how those who did them ever had the nerve. The consistency of approach and the high standard of thinking has ensured that to this day, when many DDB agencies around the world still handle the VW account, generations of creative people who have followed the original team more than half a century ago feel obliged to try to live up to their standard. Today’s VW advertising is still consistently winning awards and selling VW’s across the globe.

 
6 The Word Spreads

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    â€˜You want some respect? Go out and get it yourself.’
    DON DRAPER TO PEGGY OLSEN MAD MEN
    K rone, still dubious about the campaign said later, ‘I finished up three ads, went on vacation to St Thomas, depressed, came back two weeks later, and I was a star.’
    Mad Men’s Don Draper completely missed the point of the ‘Lemon’ ad; ‘I don’t know what I hate about it most’, he said. But everyone was talking about the campaign and it wasn’t just people in advertising. College students had the ads posted on walls and curious customers were strolling into