Read it here, or find it on C-6 in the Business Day. It’s just huge, this Season Two launch.
Okay, first nugget.
“People in the business are talking about it, gathering to watch it,” said Mary Warlick, chief executive at the One Club for Art and Copy, an organization in New York that honors creativity in advertising.
Really? WHERE THE HELL ARE THEY WATCHING IT? But I digress.
The club is presenting an exhibition intended to “bring back the real-life men and women” on whom “Mad Men” is based, Ms. Warlick said, like Mary Wells Lawrence, George Lois and David Ogilvy. The exhibition, at the Science, Industry and Business Library of the New York Public Library, runs from Tuesday through Sept. 26.
Emphasis mine. Cool as shit, right?
Much of the hoopla surrounding “Mad Men” is promoting either the DVDs or the start of the second season.
For example, Lionsgate is sponsoring the make-believe issue of Advertising Age, which comes out on Monday and takes the form of a 16-page ad section in the actual June 23 issue. The idea was the brainchild of Initiative, which is the Lionsgate media agency.The ad supplement is designed to resemble how Advertising Age looked in 1960, when the first season of “Mad Men” is set. One highlight is an imaginary interview with the main character, a conflicted creative director named Don Draper. (Mr. Weiner provides his answers.)
“We worked very closely with Matthew Weiner on all of this so it has his touch,” said Anne Parducci, executive vice president for marketing at Lionsgate Home Entertainment in Santa Monica, Calif.
I cannot tell you how much I love that. 
LOVE THAT!!!
That is also why the maker of Zippo lighters, founded in 1932, became involved with the DVD release. Zippo supplied period lighters and advertising signs for the series, said Pat Grandy, marketing communications manager at the Zippo Manufacturing Company, to help convey how omnipresent smoking was in 1960.
That led Lionsgate to design a box for the DVD set shaped like a Zippo lighter. And that led Zippo to bring out two lighters with “Mad Men” logos, to be sold online and at the company headquarters in Bradford, Pa.
We knew the first part, we didn’t know the second part. More cool!
Another nod to history comes from JWT, part of the WPP Group, which is buying a 10-second commercial that appears on the first disc in the DVD set.
The spot uses letters from the logos of JWT clients to spell the words “Mad Men” and concludes, “Making brands famous since 1864” — when the agency was known, as it was in the “Mad Men” days, as J. Walter Thompson.
I used work for WPP. I feel very special.
June 23, 2008 at 10:42 am
I so want one of those lighters. Maybe I’ll go back to smoking.
June 23, 2008 at 12:41 pm
I wish I could find an actual copy of the insert or at least a pdf on line. That’s pretty cool.
And you don’t have to go back to smoking, just justify getting one so you can give lights to the people you know that still do. Also useful in a power outage or at rock concerts.
June 23, 2008 at 12:52 pm
the beauty of these ad-industry-focused efforts, of course, is that some of these people occasionally buy cable television advertising.
i get ad age at my office, if i see it i will scan and send out …
June 23, 2008 at 1:05 pm
Dan, that’d be awesome. I am no longer specifically in advertising, so I was gonna be pulling in some favors. (I still will, to get my own copy.) This will be quicker.
June 23, 2008 at 2:50 pm
Well no wonder AD agency people love the show – it’s about them! And if there’s one thing that Mad Men has taught us, it’s that AD people love themselves. They’re even the ones who created the term “Mad Men”.
Even if ratings this season don’t jump significantly, I’d say we’re in little danger now of the show being canceled. There’s too much buzz and too much money to be made later down the line. And this is not just your everyday run of the mill fan buzz. This is a very upscale, very prestigious (big business) kind of buzz in addition to general fan based buzz. Money, baby.
June 23, 2008 at 2:56 pm
I’d buy anything Don Draper sold me….;p
June 23, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Also useful in a power outage or at rock concerts.
And Rocky Horror.
June 23, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Well no wonder AD agency people love the show – it’s about them! And if there’s one thing that Mad Men has taught us, it’s that AD people love themselves. They’re even the ones who created the term “Mad Men”.
Actually, that tends not to be true. Doctors hate “House,” cops hate cop shows, and it’s been suggested that the reason “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” tanked so quickly is because television writers hated a show about themselves, and they’re the ones writing reviews.
Maybe ad men are different.
June 23, 2008 at 3:01 pm
Kay – I hate to admit it, but yeah, me too.
Word.
June 23, 2008 at 3:03 pm
Oaktown, I respectfully disagree.
If AMC spends upwards of $25 mil on an campaign that raises viewership <5%, they will pull the plug faster than you can say Belle Jolie.
Not saying they won’t let this season run in full (although …), but hot shows get cancelled when they can’t deliver eyeballs. Unfortunately, TV isn’t a “down the line” business. Also AMC is partially owned by Cablevision, which isn’t known for its patience.
It’s just business.
June 23, 2008 at 3:30 pm
danjs – 5% or less would be very low number for a 25 mil investment. I know AMC wants to build their brand, and I imagine the 25 mil was not just an investment specifically to benefit Mad Men, but for all original programming on AMC, now and for the future. But if AMC doesn’t have full control over calling the shots, that’s not good, and you are right that everything depends on big ratings for this season.
June 23, 2008 at 4:38 pm
I don’t know. From where I sit, I think DVD sales are more lucrative to a poorly-watched show. Ratings are only an indicator of how the next season’s DVDs will sell.
And of course, the book Deb and I will write.
D’OH!
June 23, 2008 at 6:56 pm
I’m no expert and I don’t work in TV, but despite the enormous value of DVD sales to a show’s bottom line, I’ve never heard of future DVD sales actually saving a poorly rated show. I think there was a show or 2 that was canceled mid-season and the un-aired episodes were available on the DVD.
That said, other factors will surely be taken into consideration (e.g. AMC’s touting MM as their flagship original drama, critical praise, awards, etc.). I just think they want to see fairly immediate returns on their investment.
And to be fair, we the viewing public have yet to see much of that $25 mil … pr/publicity is very cost effective, and it costs nothing to air promos on your own network. The Bloomingdale’s promo and Zippo partnership likely were not cost-factors. The Ad Age piece took some dough. We’ll see where they spend their funds: outdoor, print, tv, online.
June 23, 2008 at 7:09 pm
I am 1960’s obbsssesed, so if anyone could get the Ad Age suppliment scanned and on this website, that would be beyond awesome. I understand if you can’t due to copyright issues. Yeah for the CD coming out!
June 23, 2008 at 11:23 pm
Dan, DVD sales were actually what got the Serenity movie made. Which is to say, the show was cancelled, but the DVD sold so well that it was able to be successfully pitched as a film.
June 24, 2008 at 12:27 am
Sky high DVD sales numbers are what brought back Family Guy.
June 24, 2008 at 1:50 am
Networks get the bulk of their money from ad sales and licensing to their affiliate stations. Depending on what kind of deal was struck with the production company, they may get a small portion (a very, very small portion) of “after-market” items such as syndication, foreign rights, DVDs, CDs, online sales, or other merchandise. But usually, that’s only if they actually had a hand in producing the show. For the most part, after-market items fall to the producers–in this case, Lions Gate, and Matthew Weiner/Weiner’s production company. Is AMC an actual producer of the show? Or are they merely a distributor with exclusive American (US) rights to the show? If they’re not actual *producers*, then the DVD sales don’t mean squat to them, except the cut they get from sales through their web site.
I agree, the show is getting good publicity, but that’s not entirely free, either. They had to pay a PR company to handle it all. It’s certainly less expensive than *traditional* advertising, but believe me, it’s not free. Everything costs. The Bloomingdale’s promotion has a cost associated with it as well. I’m pretty sure Bloomie’s didn’t give up any of their window space for free—even if it was in conjunction with promoting their own merchandise. Mad Men very likely had to pay some sort of fee to be there.
What I don’t understand about AMC, is why they spend money to promo their “Future of Classic” movies on other networks, but don’t do the same for Mad Men? Why advertise the same Charles Bronson movie that they’ve shown ALL WEEK, when they can advertise their flagship show instead? I’ve seen promo’s for AMC movies (Future of Classic) on other networks, but I’ve never seen a Mad Men commercial on any channel but AMC. Why is that?
June 24, 2008 at 8:24 am
Hull, it’s a Mystery.
June 24, 2008 at 2:50 pm
Here’s a link to the Advertising Age insert – amazing! http://www.adage-360media.com/adage360/madmen/
Peter G.
June 26, 2008 at 6:03 am
[...] Age has this absolutely amazing Mad Men-themed 16-page insert. (Thanks to Basketeer/Basketcase Peter G. for bringing this to our attention.) (And yeah, that means we haven’t finalized the [...]
June 29, 2008 at 8:26 am
[...] mentioned in our reporting on the New York Times article, JWT will have a ten-second advertisement inside the new DVD release. [...]
June 30, 2008 at 1:18 pm
[...] 30, 2008 · No Comments We heard about this recently, and now here it is. Zippo has created two distinctive MAD MEN Zippo lighters as the [...]
September 13, 2008 at 4:15 pm
[...] Age has this absolutely amazing Mad Men-themed 16-page insert. (Thanks to Basketeer/Basketcase Peter G. for bringing this to our attention.) (And yeah, that means we haven’t finalized the [...]