Mad Men - Don's Still Out of Time

SPOILER ALERT

Mad Men ended with a reshowing of the Coke “I’d like to teach the world to sing” also known as “Hilltop” commercial. And while the reason is ambiguous many people including my wife read it as Don, inspired by his experience in Big Sur, has been reinspired and gone back to McCann Erickson and written that ad.

Don, a man of the 50s, had been struggling to come to terms with the 60s but it seems he has now got his mojo back and has produced one of the seminal ads of its time. Ad Age rate it as #53 in its best ads of the century. But has he?

As my wife also reminded me, we never liked that ad. It was cheesy and completely out of tune with 1971.

The ad is really a hangover from the Summer of Love in 1967.  That was when eastern religions, love and peace were at their height; when living in perfect harmony and peace throughout the land was a believable ideal.

In the four years since then a lot happened. There were the Vietnam War protests. Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King’s assassinations (1968), The Chicago Democratic Convention (1968),the election of Nixon (1969), the Rolling Stones Altamont concert (1969), Charles Manson and the Sharon Tate murders (1969) the Kent State massacre that inspired Neil Young to write Ohio.(1970).

The truth is the ideals of the Hilltop commercial were long gone. There was a new grittiness and reality in the air. 1971 was a big year. All in the Family debuted.  Big Movies included “A Clockwork Orange” and “Dirty Harry”. The music we listened to included Led Zeppelin IV (“Stairway to heaven”, Who’s Next (“Won’t get fooled again”), Marvin Gaye's "What’s Going On" and David Bowie’s Hunky Dory (“Life on Mars”).  The themes were alienation and rebellion, cynicism and dystopias. Woodstock, which was the last gasp of hippie culture, was in 1969 and even there the star was Jimi Hendrix, who later that year penned the incredible "Machine Gun". His hard-edged brand matched the new reality rather than the Summer of Love influenced Jefferson Airplane.

Even Coke had a hard time. It’s ideals of happiness and innocence were out of touch with the 70s. Pepsi discovered the 60s well before Coke with its “Choice of New Generation” in 1965 and with the Pepsi Taste Challenge became a real competitor in the 70s.  Coke and McCann struggled through this period.

If Don did write ‘Hilltop’ he had certainly moved on from the suits and cigarettes of the 50s. And he has created a great piece of storytelling and television. But sadly for him, just as he comes to terms with the 60s the rest of the world has moved into the 70s. His theme soing is not "I'd like to teach the world to sing" but the Rolling Stones  'Out of time'.

You don't know what's going on
You've been away for far too long
You can't come back and think you are still mine
You're out of touch, my baby

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MAD MEN SEASON FINALE – WON’T GET FOOLED AGAIN

SPOILER ALERT

 

My wife and I were watching the finale of Mad Men earlier this week.

When it ended I felt very depressed. I felt the ending was cynical and contrived and a betrayal of what went before.

The way the main characters’ plots were tied up was a bit pat, but who doesn’t like happy endings.  I was OK with Joan setting up her own business, Roger disappearing with Megan’s Mom, and Pete becoming a client seemed natural.

But Peggy and Stan ending up together was a Harlequin ending that didn’t have any kind of ring of truth about it. But I bit my tongue – after all Don was in an existential crisis that wouldn’t end in a pat way. But no. He has a Kumbaya moment and ends up smiling and chanting mantras.

And then there was that cut to the Coke “I’d like to teach the world to sing” commercial; one of the most famous commercials ever made. Now whether the intent is to say Don went on and wrote it is beside the point at this stage. It acts as an epitaph for the program as a whole. 

It seemed like Matt Weiner was cynically playing with reality.

The endings he created were all unrealistic happy endings that were a betrayal of the reality of the characterization he had taken years to project. And then as a symbol of this he chose Coke to make a mockery of that artificiality. Coke was, of course, “the real thing” and promised happiness and that we could live in “perfect harmony”.  The very fantasy the characters were now living. 
 
It is as if they all moved from the real world to that of advertising.

And to rub salt in, the only major character to have a bad ending was Don’s wife Betty, the one main character no longer part of the world of advertising. She is terminally ill with lung cancer, no doubt brought on by smoking cigarettes, the very product Don starts out advertising in Episode 1, Season 1. (“Smoke gets in your eyes”). 

Although others don’t read it as cynically as this, others have some similar views. 1.2.3.

So I’m pretty depressed seeing my whole life as a career advertising person mocked in this way.

But then my wife speaks. She's always been smarter than me. “I never liked that ad” she says, “too cheesy, especially that song.”

Now we were both ending high school in 1971 when that ad came out and I realize she’s right. I never liked the ad either. So why should I care about Mad Men mocking it and the fantasy it portrayed.  Heck. I mocked it as well.

We never bought into the utopia offered by Coke. The bubblegum song in the ad that became a hit for the New Seekers was not what we listened to.  We knew then that all that glitters is not gold and that you can’t buy a stairway to heaven.  Well Matt Weiner – We won’t get fooled again