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