Don Draper Wouldn’t Recognise 75% of What We Do



As anyone who’s watched the wonderful AMC series knows (so, pretty much everyone), Mad Men is a world of “art and copy” – the images and words that bring Don and Peggy’s ideas to life.

The title of Google’s fringe sessions at next week’s Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity sums up the new world of advertising rather well: “Art, Copy, Code.”

The web has changed our industry just as fundamentally as it’s changed society at large (should code be a new language skill taught at schools?).

It’s true that technology increasingly sits at the heart of the creative process alongside the traditional crafts.

But the make-up of WPP’s business reveals a broader shift. Digital and interactive marketing, programmatic buying and big data now account for about $14 billion of our $18 billion of revenues. Don Draper and Roger Sterling simply wouldn’t recognise three quarters of what we do today.

Creativity may still be the core of our business and our offering to clients, but it’s no longer the sole preserve of the ad agency creative department.

The Cannes festival, for example, will honour not only our fantastically talented art directors and copywriters, but the media planners and buyers, PRs, software developers, data specialists and healthcare comms professionals, too.

This is just one of the subjects that LinkedIn executive editor Dan Roth and I talked about in a recent video interview, which you can watch below.

The fact that LinkedIn has an executive editor and is now conducting interviews highlights an interesting trend.

The new masters of the universe, the tech giants, have – rightly or wrongly – been accused not only of hobbling the business model of newspapers, magazines and TV companies, but of doing so with something of a sneer, displaying a level of disdain for so-called “old media”.

In fact, the current focus on content – from Yahoo! hiring Katie Couric to Jeff Bezos buying the Washington Post to LinkedIn’s transformation into a business publishing platform – shows that the digital barons are just as fascinated by publishing and broadcasting as the old order some believe they seek to replace.

And, speaking of the end of old orders, I do hope the “final season” of Mad Men is not, in fact, its last.

Image: Tadaomi Shibuya / Dutch Uncle

Al Mercer

Helping Professional Services firms leverage their relationship capital to identify opportunities, mitigate risk & drive growth. 200 + Legal, Accounting, Consulting, & Built Environment clients use Introhive

9 年

You go deep Carl Weston !

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Carl Weston FCIM

Law Firm Marketing & Business Development Partner > In the 1% of Non Lawyer Partners in the UK > Award Winning

9 年

I also think that communications need more than just logic. And everything the old guard discovered about storytelling and creating / satisfying needs is still relevant today. I work to the mantra "New Tools Old Rules". However, a better quote on this by a better man than me is: “It took millions of years for man’s instincts to develop. It will take millions more for them to even vary. It is fashionable to talk about changing man. A communicator must be concerned with unchanging man, with his obsessive drive to survive, to be admired, to succeed, to love, to take care of his own.” (Bill Bernbach)

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Ella Cane

SAAS - Product - Marketing - Tech - User Happiness

9 年

This is so true - advertising has changed so much that Don Draper might not even recognise some of it. Modern marketing is frighteningly different to how it was in the 50's. But it is a long called-for revolution. Here's an interesting inforgaphic about just how much it has changed - and where it is possibly heading https://onlinebrands.co.nz/873/the-end-of-marketing-infographic/

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Jef Loeb

Creative director/strategist/writer/director at Brainchild Creative

10 年

Sir Martin: While he'd need to learn some skills, and some new language, I'm not sure Don Draper wouldn't thrive today. From "mirror targeting" (a new way to talk about the resemblance of existing customers to the next most likely) to the use of ambient media (Times Square, then, now, and forever, it would seem) - we have more in common with our predecessors than would be expected. Then there's always the chapter in Steve Harrison's intriguing Gossage bio that makes the intriguing claim that the San Francisco iconoclast invented social media.

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