On Mad Men, Women in the Advertising Industry, Diversity, Mentors and Balance: BlogHer Talks to Deutsch CEO Linda Sawyer

Thanks for your comment, Belinda and I'll have to check out Gruen Transfer and see if it's watchable here in the U.S.

And you nailed it for all businesses:

figuring out they can make more money with a balanced and emotionally intelligent work force

Bingo!

BlogHer Contributing Editor ( http://www.blogher.com/blog/maria-niles )
PopConsumer ( http://consumerpop.typepad.com/popconsumer )
Beyond Help ( http://mariax.vox.com/ )

I've only just started watching MadMen and find it tragically sad and clever. I'm so thankful I didn't end up in the advertising industry.

The Gruen Transfer show ( http://www.abc.net.au/tv/gruentransfer/home.htm ) has been fantastic for discussing the advertising industry, how the industry works and the opinion panel is a great way of exploring how ads are made and how they work (or don't). I love best the spoof ads but just about everyone does! I'm pretty sure you can download episodes online, maybe via iView?

I think the way to push through the backward culture of sexism in the advertising industry will take the men figuring out they can make more money with a balanced and emotionally intelligent work force than a backwards one.

All the best,

Belinda

PS. I've launched a free online competition with SheInspires ( http://www.sheinspires.com.au ) so check it out and go in it!

Great Earring Holders - great presents and no more messy jewelry tangles! ( http://www.creativelybelle.com/stands )

Thank you for this thoughtful and wonderfully evocative comment, Deb. You've given powerful testimony to the message Ms. Sawyer describes Ad Age as sending.

Thank you for bringing the illustration to our attention. Like you and many of your readers, the message wasn't that clear to me and the language in the article further obscured a message of holding up a mirror. I wonder perhaps if it might have been more obvious to people in the advertising industry rather than us who work with and not for ad agencies.

Ms. Sawyer was wonderful to interview, though, so I'm grateful that the confusion led to the opportunity to dig deeper and hear her thoughts on the range of topics we discussed.

And I agree, cute dress; I'm a fan of the sleeveless shift. But the context reinforces a message of diminished power which with either interpretation of the meaning seems what it was meant to do.

BlogHer Contributing Editor ( http://www.blogher.com/blog/maria-niles )
PopConsumer ( http://consumerpop.typepad.com/popconsumer )
Beyond Help ( http://mariax.vox.com/ )

Thanks, Maria.  It's interesting to look at this cover a few months more into the recession.  I love Mad Men because of the way it brilliantly skewers the commodification of our culture that happened during the post-war time of prosperity.  The show wraps very dark messages in a glamorous and nostalgic exterior, and the Ad Age illustration does the same thing to contemporary Madison Avenue. The fact that decades later the field is still trying to shake the last drops of bourbon out of their almost empty glasses is an indictment of a floundering industry.   This illustration shows that advertising today is led by Mad Men, white men with obsolete business models and ways of thinking, who are foolishly stuck in the past as they try to manipulate declining consumer interest with declining corporate budgets. Advertising may have been mad with power in the 60s, but now they are just mad with desperation. 

Deb
www.debontherocks.com ( http://www.debontherocks.com/ )blog
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Toby Bloomberg, Diva Marketing

Maria - one of the things I love most about social media is how one idea can spin into more .. your post is a wonderful example. Great interview with Linda Sawyer that helped put the Ad Age cover into perspective. It also gave us a nice behind the scene understanding of the CEO of one of the largest ad agencies.

Imho one of the missed opportunities of the cover was in not including an article about the purpose of using Mad Men as a spoof. As many of the comments of my post indicated people, me included, were just not sure where Ad Age was going with this one. How much stronger the issue would have been if it had even include your interview of Ms. Sawyer. 

 By the way, I have nothing against the dress. In fact, I have a couple in a similar style and our new first lady seems to like the look as well. Reinforces, however, how essential "packaging" is to image.