An Argument for Mad Men's McCann-Erikson: "Stop Struggling. You've won."
I was pretty hurried with my series finale review- so new topics on Mad Men keep burbling up in my head. I come here, not to criticize Mad Men's version of McCann-Erikson but to defend it. But seriously, one of the joys of the series was McCann-Erikson lurking as the evil corporate boogeyman since S1- and then, getting to see Mad Men's version of the actual company with all of its warts and quirks and unlikely positives. With just a few more eps of McCann, I really could have arrived at the, "I love those assholes...but still, *assholes*" stance that I take with all of the iterations of Sterling Cooper. And I found both McCann and all versions of Sterling Cooper more pettable and endearing than Cutler Gleason & Chaough.
First of all, I don't really consider *everyone* a winner from the Shut the Door, Have a Seat coup. The SCDP founding partners who survived to the final buy-out by McCann were winners. Yay for Pete, Roger, and Don. Joan ended up being a financial winner but just on the chance, that the Jaguar guy wanted to sleep with her. However, I query. Would Lane have survived if he had the financial stability of a regular paycheck and regular bonuses from a large corporation instead of putting up a capital contribution and living paycheck to paycheck through SCDPs lean times? Would Lane have felt safer if he didn't burn his bridges with PPL? I venture to say, "Absolutely" on the latter and "probably" on the former. (Then again, if Lane swallowed his pride and asked for a loan and held on, he could have gotten his finances in order after the agency did become much more reliably successful after acquiring Jaguar and then, probably gotten ahead when they acquired Chevy.)
If Peggy needed the prestige of working for a large agency like McCann to demand a higher salary in the future, wouldn't it have been better if Peggy didn't lose 1964 through 1970 as preemo time for her to work her way up the Creative ladder and get a prestigious name like McCann on her young resume? One can make the argument that back at the start of 1964, McCann would have considered her redundant if she came with Paul Kinsey as SC senior creative and would have let her go way too early because she was the girl copy-writer. Could have happened- not entirely sure. It would have been less likely if Don came to McCann as the prized pig (to quote Connie Hilton) and got to pick which creative he couldn't live without. Peggy did get to be The Protégé with Don and Ted partly because the smaller, more intimate office allowed Peggy to forge a close relationship with the Rainmaker Creative Director Big Shot and really learn. Don's and Ted's favoritism and smaller staff allowed Peggy to practice being a manager of the other Creatives. However, I do have to wonder whether Peggy could have bloomed wherever she was planted and she'd actually benefit from finding a number of professional, serious Creative Directors in a large organization without suffering from the Lean Times where Don and Ted were actually unprofessional, crappy mentors because of their own issues. (Moreover, to be frank, I think *Don* had lessons to impart on strategy and consumer understanding and the creative process. I don't think Ted was all that special as an artiste or as a game-playing strategist.) Just because Paul Kinsey flamed out at McCann does not mean that Peggy would have.
Bert Cooper may have been put out to pasture to work on the emeritus floor at McCann until he was encouraged to leave. However, I'm not sure that the same thing didn't happen at SCDP/SC 2.0. Bert didn't have accounts or an office space until the CGS merger. A lot of major business decisions occurred entirely without Bert Cooper, much to his chagrin, from the New York Times tobacco letter to the immediate fall-out of losing Lucky Strike to firing Jaguar to merging with CGS to get Chevy.
I mean, it's funny to note that Shut the Door, Have a Seat has flashbacks of Archie Whitman refusing to join the rest of the farmers and sell his grain at a disappointing price and throwing a temper tantrum like he was advancing some great big cause. Thus, Archie made the executive decisions to sit on the grain and starve right up until Abigail was angry enough and Archie was petulantly drunk enough to tramp out in the middle of the night, in the rain, while falling-down-drunk to make little Dick drive with him all the way to town from the sticks. The result? Archie Whitman wasn't looking at where he was going and his horse kicked him in his face, and he orphaned Dick and left Adam without a father.
IMO, Don's choice to leave to start SCDP was WAY smarter than his father's choice to not sell grain until the winter, the choice certainly at least materially enriched him much more, Don handled the risk-taking with intelligence. There was genuine coalition of intelligent, self-interested adults who felt this move was in their interests and negotiated their interests (except, ironically po' po' Harry Crane) as opposed the farmers in the cooperative who were just thrown out of the house, Abigail who was ordered to starve until winter, and above all, like, child Dick was ordered to starve and made to go on a clearly horrible idea to tramp out in a storm in the middle of the night with his drunk dad to sell the grain to avoid getting beat. However at the same time, I do think there's a certain connection between Father's and Son's petulance about economic realities that they can't control. Note again, Archie was really being silly because he signed up to be part of the cooperative of grain farmers and couldn't live with the consequences. Don, actually, didn't get to choose or participate in the debate on whether SC should be bought by PPL. However, Don certainly pocketed his share of the money and dem's the breaks on Don's *junior* partner status who couldn't stop the merger with just his votes and Don choosing to flake out in California at the end of S2 and thus, miss out on a chance to influence Bert and his sister with Don's gift of the blarney. (Which, I think could have changed history because Alice and Bert Cooper were reluctant sellers.)
Thus in terms of the players, I have to shrug my shoulders and say, "There are winners and losers in most business decisions" because it's really not cut-and-dried that delaying the McCann acquisition by six years worked out best for everyone. However, we can all debate whether it's important to human development to enjoy creative, ground-breaking advertising because it *is* a form of art. One can argue advertising is a form of art that speaks about the products that human being rely on or use regularly instead of a movie whose relevance for a consumer ends when the movie ends, giving advertising a special anthropological significance. One can argue "Art is art and advertising is corporate pandering even if it comes in a more palatable wrapping. Inter-racial hippie types singing about peace or trying to capture Anne Margaret's ability to be 25 and act 15- the end goal was to sell soda in both instances." I see the latter's point but I'm much more on the former's side and IMO, so is Mad Men's story and authorial intent. To get really meta, the ads and pitches created for Mad Men feel like art to me in the confines of the television show. However, as I said in my review of the series finale, that's because the MM ad storylines are a little divorced from the selling of a product but very married to the television show plots and narrative. (Although, I'm not sure if MM has product placement for the companies still in existence.) Per my review, I can't state enough how much I love a quite a few of the failed campaigns or temper tantrum campaigns. The "Why I Quit Tobacco" letter, the "Sweet part of a whorehouse" Hershey pitch, "Bye Bye Sugar, Hello Patio", "Vacation or Suicide" for Sheraton, "So well built, we won't even show you the second floor" for Jantzen bikinis, Don's used car salesman affect to sell pitching Jaguars as a low-priced car to the British executives to insult Herb and keep his own luxury campaign but stick to Herb's letter of the law. The artistic success of these moments with the story of Mad Men hilariously contrasts to their in-story commercial failure.
However if you take the point of view that advertising is corporate pandering anyway, why does it matter whether it comes out of a smaller shop? How does advertising become more virtuous if Don Draper calls the shots instead of Jim Hobart? If you take the latter point that advertising *can* be wonderful art that brings people together or it can be terrible art that calcifies wedge issues in society, can't McCann-Erikson produce both types just as much as all iterations of SC did. I've agreed with Matt Weiner's media quotes in the last week that the "I'd like to Buy the World a Coke" ad was beautiful, incredibly important for bringing multi-racial inclusiveness to the corporate world, and it was a concession to hippies partly borne out of how hippies legitimately won the argument on the Vietnam War because they were proven correct by history. Yes, there are more cynical and likely TRUTHFUL shades. However, things don't need to be ideologically pure or sufficient lefty abrasive or independent of corporate sponsorship in order to have merit. However, THERE YOU GO, according to Matt Weiner, Don did that ad at McCann-Erikson and according to history, Bill Backer at McCann-Erikson created that ad. That's after just two eps with McCann.
local_max drew my attention to some of the message and story similarities to Dollhouse and Mad Men. McCann acquiring SC 2.0 is not the DC Dollhouse gaining control over the LA Dollhouse even though the fear, anger, and humiliation at being acquired and pushed down the totem pole on the part of Our Unlikely Protagonists is ironically similar. IMO, you could just argue that the Dollhouse technology created much bigger opportunities for abuse than 1960s advertising. However, IMO, that would be somewhat begging the question because the Dollhouse is the excesses of Dow Chemical and "It's Toasted" and "All women are a Jackie or a Marilyn" and the ugliest sides of 1960s advertising but beyond Michael Ginsberg's "fear the computer" wildest dreams. However, it's more pointedly a function that SC 2.0 and McCann are all in the same business. They're both Madison Avenue firm agencies with *Mad Men*, including some of the men who coined that very expression. As opposed to the LA Dollhouse which is really in the business of sexual human trafficking and providing body guards (and then, has to do more serious stuff when something has gone wrong) and the DC Dollhouse which is in the business of creating a New World Order to Erase All Individuality and Co-Opt Every Person Into the Dollhouse System.
Those female copywriters who tried getting in on Avon with Joan...it's possible that they were just sniffing around for prestige but IMO, they actually seemed excited about the creative work and feeling of satisfaction of selling a product that they like. Does anyone think that Peggy is just going to halt coming up with clever, witty ideas? Why did Peggy fight to keep Chevalier? Some of it was to keep her turf and establish dominance- but IMO, some of it was she likes selling that product because she likes the shoes. Much like, how Peggy had great ideas to sell Topaz pantyhose because she uses that pantyhose because it's economical and how Peggy wanted to change Belle Jolie lipsticks' whole approach because she deeply felt that no one woman wants to be just one out of a hundred in a box. I do think there's a dynamic that Peggy really likes the fuzzier side of selling consumer products, as much as she'll participate in the economic realities of working on racist, far-afield-from-her-subway-and-pedestrian-life Filmore Auto Parts or Nepalm Dow Chemical. This could have been addressed more in the show- but IMO, Peggy partly stayed at McCann to get to work on Chevalier and Coca Cola (to illustrate the products that she clearly liked and liked the idea of working on) as opposed to Joan's burgeoning production company where Dow Chemical was the sole client so far.
Since Don comes back and makes the coke ad, isn't it evident that Don figured out a way to USE HIS WORDS in the big meeting of twenty Creative Directors to move the conversation away from "Take an average Coke consumer" to a persuasive pitch about how to capture youth culture that, as is typical in Don's best pitches, found a way to tap into his passion and worldliness while skirting the darker parts of that passion and some of the screwed up ways that he came by his worldliness. Ted was really happy at McCann because, IMO, he likes thinking creative thoughts (as milquetoast as I believe they come out) without the pressures of management and being a STAH.
I mean, I've thought hard about this exchange between Don and Peggy in Shut the Door, Have a Seat:
Don: Do you know why I don't want to go to McCann?
Peggy: Because you can't work for anyone else.
Don: No. Because there are people out there who buy things, People like you and me, And something happened-- Something terrible. And the way that they saw themselves is gone. And nobody understands that. But you do.
And that's very valuable.
I still don't get Don's point. BTW, this doesn't usually happen. I've seen the writing for Don criticized as fantastical or self-indulgent on Mathew Weiner's part. Not me- I feel him on an uncomfortably huge level. This is pretty inscrutable to me. I think his point ultimately boils down to the fact that mass culture has erased individualism. People see themselves as just one of a hundred in a box at first glance. An ad man or ad woman who GETS that stands a better chance of manipulating the consumer to either stay in the conformist group (Filmore Auto Parts: Where the Pros Go) or empowering the consumer to up their expectations for individuality even beyond the bounds of the product as originally manufactured (MARK your man).
....However, it still feels like it's sod-all to do with McCann. IMO, Don just felt the above thought very deeply and sincerely and Peggy responded to the connection and feeling of being Chosen and THAT was where the recruitment was successful. It wasn't because of a genuine statement against advertising as done by McCann. And again, I think it's possible that Peggy would actually have more options and be ahead if she went to McCann alone or if Don followed his contract at the end of 1963 and SC followed PPL to McCann.
Even on the Accounts side, Big Bad Evil McCann was a paradise for Pete. And then, McCann was super-amiable about Pete taking the private jet job. That indicates McCann didn't get to be where it was by just working as a sausage factory that requires people to play by a narrow circumscribed rule book. Jim Hobart and his counselors saw a strategic advance in making Pete a satellite of McCann working from the jet company, and ended up serving Pete's family needs and likely advancing their bottom line. If Don did come back to McCann to write the Coke ad, it indicates that McCann probably as indulgent as SC about Don's being a temperamental artiste and actually, more indulgent than small shop Jim Cutler would have been.
Yes, Joan was a casualty of McCann. However, let's not romanticize the non-stop sexism and harassment at all versions of Sterling Cooper. As I wrote in a comment exchange:
The thing about Joan is that she really does appear like the worst stereotype of a woman at first glance. The SC 2.0 guys know Joan and know that she's smart and competent and they personally owe Joan for putting their firm on the map by whoring herself out for Jaguar. All the McCann guys can see is that there's a tackily-sexy looking partner who they had to pay a million bucks to who apparently, only carries like three accounts (two of which are small where Avon is the only white whale) and doesn't do creative and whose CV only has versions of secretarial work before she miraculously got this expensive partnership. Of course, that doesn't justify their misogynistic, brutal, unprofessional behavior. Rather it hangs a light bulb that maybe the '60s sexual revolution opened doors for women. And there are assertive, female copy writers at McCann who don't appear to have gotten in on their looks. However, the post-sexual revolution man looks for a "reason" to attack a woman with suspiciously earned prestige and that caries through today. Like Jim Hobart's insinuation that Joan got the partnership in some old, besotted guy's will. I'm not entirely sure the SC partners would treat an unknown Joan (who they paid a million dollars to when it's not even clear what she does) much better.
However, again, there's still the double standards. Roger actually did have big successes from his charm and intelligence in his career. But he DID get his partnership in someone's will and he doesn't do creative and from what I can see, he's not in charge of servicing practically any accounts now. However while he suffers from ageism, there's, at least, an assumption at McCann that he paid his dues in the past and he can be treated like a ad man emeritus. Joan doesn't get that, largely because she's a woman and secretary is on her CV.
There was definitely something wrong in how McCann treated Joan, but it really feels like not so much a McCann problem so much as a 1971 problems and a "corporate masters hate paying unless they see a clear reason for it and masters will take their anger out at clear targets for extra costs that don't seem needed at first glance." Frankly, I felt there was actually a very 2000s uber-modern sexism to Joan's treatment. We are past the, "Watching Peggy come up with the basket of kisses wittiness was like....watching a dog play the piano" era of sexism. However, I think we're still very much in the, "A really sexy partner earned way too much money above her apparent station. Let's have a little fun and see if we can get out of paying her the rest" era of sexism.
So, IMO, we ended up with realism. McCann offers security, more interesting accounts, and the prestige of a larger shop. SC offers the closer-knit feel, flexibility, a shorter management ladder, and excitement of a smaller company. However, they're all ultimately doing the same thing and producing pretty similar products, just depending on which Creative is at the helm. I do feel like there's a metaphor here to the politics of the 1960s. However, it's not coming up because the Big Bads of the 1960s like the Communist dictatorships (especially the USSR) that American politicians were casting as the Big Bad or the military-industrial complex and American war-machine that the hippies were casting as the Big Bad were all.....Big and Bad. Big and Bad on a level that an advertising agency could not be, despite the cigarette and Dow chemical ads. The closest that I can come is that "Being Acquired By McCann" ended up being similarly outrageous and over-blown a worst-case scenario that went on for the entire 1960s as the "Communist Domino Theory", with respect to actual citizens who did suffer under Communism and not-as-much respect to SC employees who McCann did crush (Kinsey, Ken Cosgrove, Joan other than the millions that she earned from the buy-out, arguably Shirley who was afraid of the racism at McCann to start over as a secretary.)
First of all, I don't really consider *everyone* a winner from the Shut the Door, Have a Seat coup. The SCDP founding partners who survived to the final buy-out by McCann were winners. Yay for Pete, Roger, and Don. Joan ended up being a financial winner but just on the chance, that the Jaguar guy wanted to sleep with her. However, I query. Would Lane have survived if he had the financial stability of a regular paycheck and regular bonuses from a large corporation instead of putting up a capital contribution and living paycheck to paycheck through SCDPs lean times? Would Lane have felt safer if he didn't burn his bridges with PPL? I venture to say, "Absolutely" on the latter and "probably" on the former. (Then again, if Lane swallowed his pride and asked for a loan and held on, he could have gotten his finances in order after the agency did become much more reliably successful after acquiring Jaguar and then, probably gotten ahead when they acquired Chevy.)
If Peggy needed the prestige of working for a large agency like McCann to demand a higher salary in the future, wouldn't it have been better if Peggy didn't lose 1964 through 1970 as preemo time for her to work her way up the Creative ladder and get a prestigious name like McCann on her young resume? One can make the argument that back at the start of 1964, McCann would have considered her redundant if she came with Paul Kinsey as SC senior creative and would have let her go way too early because she was the girl copy-writer. Could have happened- not entirely sure. It would have been less likely if Don came to McCann as the prized pig (to quote Connie Hilton) and got to pick which creative he couldn't live without. Peggy did get to be The Protégé with Don and Ted partly because the smaller, more intimate office allowed Peggy to forge a close relationship with the Rainmaker Creative Director Big Shot and really learn. Don's and Ted's favoritism and smaller staff allowed Peggy to practice being a manager of the other Creatives. However, I do have to wonder whether Peggy could have bloomed wherever she was planted and she'd actually benefit from finding a number of professional, serious Creative Directors in a large organization without suffering from the Lean Times where Don and Ted were actually unprofessional, crappy mentors because of their own issues. (Moreover, to be frank, I think *Don* had lessons to impart on strategy and consumer understanding and the creative process. I don't think Ted was all that special as an artiste or as a game-playing strategist.) Just because Paul Kinsey flamed out at McCann does not mean that Peggy would have.
Bert Cooper may have been put out to pasture to work on the emeritus floor at McCann until he was encouraged to leave. However, I'm not sure that the same thing didn't happen at SCDP/SC 2.0. Bert didn't have accounts or an office space until the CGS merger. A lot of major business decisions occurred entirely without Bert Cooper, much to his chagrin, from the New York Times tobacco letter to the immediate fall-out of losing Lucky Strike to firing Jaguar to merging with CGS to get Chevy.
I mean, it's funny to note that Shut the Door, Have a Seat has flashbacks of Archie Whitman refusing to join the rest of the farmers and sell his grain at a disappointing price and throwing a temper tantrum like he was advancing some great big cause. Thus, Archie made the executive decisions to sit on the grain and starve right up until Abigail was angry enough and Archie was petulantly drunk enough to tramp out in the middle of the night, in the rain, while falling-down-drunk to make little Dick drive with him all the way to town from the sticks. The result? Archie Whitman wasn't looking at where he was going and his horse kicked him in his face, and he orphaned Dick and left Adam without a father.
IMO, Don's choice to leave to start SCDP was WAY smarter than his father's choice to not sell grain until the winter, the choice certainly at least materially enriched him much more, Don handled the risk-taking with intelligence. There was genuine coalition of intelligent, self-interested adults who felt this move was in their interests and negotiated their interests (except, ironically po' po' Harry Crane) as opposed the farmers in the cooperative who were just thrown out of the house, Abigail who was ordered to starve until winter, and above all, like, child Dick was ordered to starve and made to go on a clearly horrible idea to tramp out in a storm in the middle of the night with his drunk dad to sell the grain to avoid getting beat. However at the same time, I do think there's a certain connection between Father's and Son's petulance about economic realities that they can't control. Note again, Archie was really being silly because he signed up to be part of the cooperative of grain farmers and couldn't live with the consequences. Don, actually, didn't get to choose or participate in the debate on whether SC should be bought by PPL. However, Don certainly pocketed his share of the money and dem's the breaks on Don's *junior* partner status who couldn't stop the merger with just his votes and Don choosing to flake out in California at the end of S2 and thus, miss out on a chance to influence Bert and his sister with Don's gift of the blarney. (Which, I think could have changed history because Alice and Bert Cooper were reluctant sellers.)
Thus in terms of the players, I have to shrug my shoulders and say, "There are winners and losers in most business decisions" because it's really not cut-and-dried that delaying the McCann acquisition by six years worked out best for everyone. However, we can all debate whether it's important to human development to enjoy creative, ground-breaking advertising because it *is* a form of art. One can argue advertising is a form of art that speaks about the products that human being rely on or use regularly instead of a movie whose relevance for a consumer ends when the movie ends, giving advertising a special anthropological significance. One can argue "Art is art and advertising is corporate pandering even if it comes in a more palatable wrapping. Inter-racial hippie types singing about peace or trying to capture Anne Margaret's ability to be 25 and act 15- the end goal was to sell soda in both instances." I see the latter's point but I'm much more on the former's side and IMO, so is Mad Men's story and authorial intent. To get really meta, the ads and pitches created for Mad Men feel like art to me in the confines of the television show. However, as I said in my review of the series finale, that's because the MM ad storylines are a little divorced from the selling of a product but very married to the television show plots and narrative. (Although, I'm not sure if MM has product placement for the companies still in existence.) Per my review, I can't state enough how much I love a quite a few of the failed campaigns or temper tantrum campaigns. The "Why I Quit Tobacco" letter, the "Sweet part of a whorehouse" Hershey pitch, "Bye Bye Sugar, Hello Patio", "Vacation or Suicide" for Sheraton, "So well built, we won't even show you the second floor" for Jantzen bikinis, Don's used car salesman affect to sell pitching Jaguars as a low-priced car to the British executives to insult Herb and keep his own luxury campaign but stick to Herb's letter of the law. The artistic success of these moments with the story of Mad Men hilariously contrasts to their in-story commercial failure.
However if you take the point of view that advertising is corporate pandering anyway, why does it matter whether it comes out of a smaller shop? How does advertising become more virtuous if Don Draper calls the shots instead of Jim Hobart? If you take the latter point that advertising *can* be wonderful art that brings people together or it can be terrible art that calcifies wedge issues in society, can't McCann-Erikson produce both types just as much as all iterations of SC did. I've agreed with Matt Weiner's media quotes in the last week that the "I'd like to Buy the World a Coke" ad was beautiful, incredibly important for bringing multi-racial inclusiveness to the corporate world, and it was a concession to hippies partly borne out of how hippies legitimately won the argument on the Vietnam War because they were proven correct by history. Yes, there are more cynical and likely TRUTHFUL shades. However, things don't need to be ideologically pure or sufficient lefty abrasive or independent of corporate sponsorship in order to have merit. However, THERE YOU GO, according to Matt Weiner, Don did that ad at McCann-Erikson and according to history, Bill Backer at McCann-Erikson created that ad. That's after just two eps with McCann.
local_max drew my attention to some of the message and story similarities to Dollhouse and Mad Men. McCann acquiring SC 2.0 is not the DC Dollhouse gaining control over the LA Dollhouse even though the fear, anger, and humiliation at being acquired and pushed down the totem pole on the part of Our Unlikely Protagonists is ironically similar. IMO, you could just argue that the Dollhouse technology created much bigger opportunities for abuse than 1960s advertising. However, IMO, that would be somewhat begging the question because the Dollhouse is the excesses of Dow Chemical and "It's Toasted" and "All women are a Jackie or a Marilyn" and the ugliest sides of 1960s advertising but beyond Michael Ginsberg's "fear the computer" wildest dreams. However, it's more pointedly a function that SC 2.0 and McCann are all in the same business. They're both Madison Avenue firm agencies with *Mad Men*, including some of the men who coined that very expression. As opposed to the LA Dollhouse which is really in the business of sexual human trafficking and providing body guards (and then, has to do more serious stuff when something has gone wrong) and the DC Dollhouse which is in the business of creating a New World Order to Erase All Individuality and Co-Opt Every Person Into the Dollhouse System.
Those female copywriters who tried getting in on Avon with Joan...it's possible that they were just sniffing around for prestige but IMO, they actually seemed excited about the creative work and feeling of satisfaction of selling a product that they like. Does anyone think that Peggy is just going to halt coming up with clever, witty ideas? Why did Peggy fight to keep Chevalier? Some of it was to keep her turf and establish dominance- but IMO, some of it was she likes selling that product because she likes the shoes. Much like, how Peggy had great ideas to sell Topaz pantyhose because she uses that pantyhose because it's economical and how Peggy wanted to change Belle Jolie lipsticks' whole approach because she deeply felt that no one woman wants to be just one out of a hundred in a box. I do think there's a dynamic that Peggy really likes the fuzzier side of selling consumer products, as much as she'll participate in the economic realities of working on racist, far-afield-from-her-subway-and-pedestrian-life Filmore Auto Parts or Nepalm Dow Chemical. This could have been addressed more in the show- but IMO, Peggy partly stayed at McCann to get to work on Chevalier and Coca Cola (to illustrate the products that she clearly liked and liked the idea of working on) as opposed to Joan's burgeoning production company where Dow Chemical was the sole client so far.
Since Don comes back and makes the coke ad, isn't it evident that Don figured out a way to USE HIS WORDS in the big meeting of twenty Creative Directors to move the conversation away from "Take an average Coke consumer" to a persuasive pitch about how to capture youth culture that, as is typical in Don's best pitches, found a way to tap into his passion and worldliness while skirting the darker parts of that passion and some of the screwed up ways that he came by his worldliness. Ted was really happy at McCann because, IMO, he likes thinking creative thoughts (as milquetoast as I believe they come out) without the pressures of management and being a STAH.
I mean, I've thought hard about this exchange between Don and Peggy in Shut the Door, Have a Seat:
Don: Do you know why I don't want to go to McCann?
Peggy: Because you can't work for anyone else.
Don: No. Because there are people out there who buy things, People like you and me, And something happened-- Something terrible. And the way that they saw themselves is gone. And nobody understands that. But you do.
And that's very valuable.
I still don't get Don's point. BTW, this doesn't usually happen. I've seen the writing for Don criticized as fantastical or self-indulgent on Mathew Weiner's part. Not me- I feel him on an uncomfortably huge level. This is pretty inscrutable to me. I think his point ultimately boils down to the fact that mass culture has erased individualism. People see themselves as just one of a hundred in a box at first glance. An ad man or ad woman who GETS that stands a better chance of manipulating the consumer to either stay in the conformist group (Filmore Auto Parts: Where the Pros Go) or empowering the consumer to up their expectations for individuality even beyond the bounds of the product as originally manufactured (MARK your man).
....However, it still feels like it's sod-all to do with McCann. IMO, Don just felt the above thought very deeply and sincerely and Peggy responded to the connection and feeling of being Chosen and THAT was where the recruitment was successful. It wasn't because of a genuine statement against advertising as done by McCann. And again, I think it's possible that Peggy would actually have more options and be ahead if she went to McCann alone or if Don followed his contract at the end of 1963 and SC followed PPL to McCann.
Even on the Accounts side, Big Bad Evil McCann was a paradise for Pete. And then, McCann was super-amiable about Pete taking the private jet job. That indicates McCann didn't get to be where it was by just working as a sausage factory that requires people to play by a narrow circumscribed rule book. Jim Hobart and his counselors saw a strategic advance in making Pete a satellite of McCann working from the jet company, and ended up serving Pete's family needs and likely advancing their bottom line. If Don did come back to McCann to write the Coke ad, it indicates that McCann probably as indulgent as SC about Don's being a temperamental artiste and actually, more indulgent than small shop Jim Cutler would have been.
Yes, Joan was a casualty of McCann. However, let's not romanticize the non-stop sexism and harassment at all versions of Sterling Cooper. As I wrote in a comment exchange:
The thing about Joan is that she really does appear like the worst stereotype of a woman at first glance. The SC 2.0 guys know Joan and know that she's smart and competent and they personally owe Joan for putting their firm on the map by whoring herself out for Jaguar. All the McCann guys can see is that there's a tackily-sexy looking partner who they had to pay a million bucks to who apparently, only carries like three accounts (two of which are small where Avon is the only white whale) and doesn't do creative and whose CV only has versions of secretarial work before she miraculously got this expensive partnership. Of course, that doesn't justify their misogynistic, brutal, unprofessional behavior. Rather it hangs a light bulb that maybe the '60s sexual revolution opened doors for women. And there are assertive, female copy writers at McCann who don't appear to have gotten in on their looks. However, the post-sexual revolution man looks for a "reason" to attack a woman with suspiciously earned prestige and that caries through today. Like Jim Hobart's insinuation that Joan got the partnership in some old, besotted guy's will. I'm not entirely sure the SC partners would treat an unknown Joan (who they paid a million dollars to when it's not even clear what she does) much better.
However, again, there's still the double standards. Roger actually did have big successes from his charm and intelligence in his career. But he DID get his partnership in someone's will and he doesn't do creative and from what I can see, he's not in charge of servicing practically any accounts now. However while he suffers from ageism, there's, at least, an assumption at McCann that he paid his dues in the past and he can be treated like a ad man emeritus. Joan doesn't get that, largely because she's a woman and secretary is on her CV.
There was definitely something wrong in how McCann treated Joan, but it really feels like not so much a McCann problem so much as a 1971 problems and a "corporate masters hate paying unless they see a clear reason for it and masters will take their anger out at clear targets for extra costs that don't seem needed at first glance." Frankly, I felt there was actually a very 2000s uber-modern sexism to Joan's treatment. We are past the, "Watching Peggy come up with the basket of kisses wittiness was like....watching a dog play the piano" era of sexism. However, I think we're still very much in the, "A really sexy partner earned way too much money above her apparent station. Let's have a little fun and see if we can get out of paying her the rest" era of sexism.
So, IMO, we ended up with realism. McCann offers security, more interesting accounts, and the prestige of a larger shop. SC offers the closer-knit feel, flexibility, a shorter management ladder, and excitement of a smaller company. However, they're all ultimately doing the same thing and producing pretty similar products, just depending on which Creative is at the helm. I do feel like there's a metaphor here to the politics of the 1960s. However, it's not coming up because the Big Bads of the 1960s like the Communist dictatorships (especially the USSR) that American politicians were casting as the Big Bad or the military-industrial complex and American war-machine that the hippies were casting as the Big Bad were all.....Big and Bad. Big and Bad on a level that an advertising agency could not be, despite the cigarette and Dow chemical ads. The closest that I can come is that "Being Acquired By McCann" ended up being similarly outrageous and over-blown a worst-case scenario that went on for the entire 1960s as the "Communist Domino Theory", with respect to actual citizens who did suffer under Communism and not-as-much respect to SC employees who McCann did crush (Kinsey, Ken Cosgrove, Joan other than the millions that she earned from the buy-out, arguably Shirley who was afraid of the racism at McCann to start over as a secretary.)