Week 4 EOC -- Part 2

While Mad Men is a very historically accurate portrayal of time in the American past, it also portrays with vivid accuracy the advertising and marketing world of then, and also of now. In episode one we watched as Don was trying to come up with an advertising campaign that would still make people want to purchase Lucky Strike cigarettes even though Reader’s Digest had just pronounced them unhealthy. As a firm it would seem that Sterling Cooper went through all the necessary steps. They did research, they found a target market, all Don had to do was put this information together and create an advertising campaign. This is where things got tumultuous. The marketing director proposed that there is a psychological function in which people have a ‘death wish’ that they will smoke no matter what. Don was also told on at least two occasions that people smoke and will continue to smoke. Don had to throw all this information aside, he is not a marketer, he is not trying to get people a product that they want or need, he is trying to sell a product to the people. He knew he needed a way to make people purchase the product and that was not by telling them that since they were going to die anyway they might as well smoke Lucky Strikes while doing it. Though the marketing research provided him with information, it was his job as an ad man to take that information further and create a product or image for people to purchase.