588 ChaPter^11
few did that better than Don Draper.
Draper started with a small, “boutique,” Public Relations [PR] firm and
worked his way up to become a partner, snared the Jaguar automobile
account, lost that when he talked down to a Jaguar representative, landed a
Chevy account and merged with a rival ad agency, got fired because of an
erratic presentation to a potential client, and made a triumphant return with
an even bigger stake in General Motors advertising. He also infuriated the
tobacco industry by taking out an ad in the New York Times announcing that
his agency would not do cigarette advertising because of the health risks
involved in smoking [they had just lost the Lucky Strike account, so his noble
act was also expedient]. In one of the most interesting story lines, there was
an arc where Don almost got Conrad Hilton to turn over the account for
Hilton Hotels to him. The discussions between Draper and “Connie” Hilton
foreshadowed the globalization of the decades to come as they talked about
opening up shop all over the world and bringing Hilton into every nation,
even “the moon.” When Don made his official pitch, however, he disap-
pointed Hilton because his list of countries in which Hilton could do business
was limited. “You did not give me what I wanted,” Hilton told Draper, “when
I say I want the moon, I expect the moon.”
Obviously, Hilton did not put a hotel on the moon, but Mad Men kept
taking on the major issues of the time. It dealt with the Cold War, the
Kennedy Assassination, Civil Rights [and the question of getting into “the
Negro market”], Vietnam, hippies, drug use, feminism, and the 1969 Moon
landing [by Neil Armstrong, not Conrad Hilton]. By focusing on the ad
industry, Weiner gave Americans a view of Capitalism they would rarely, if
ever, see. Rather than a free market based on supply-and-demand, the econ-
omy, as Don Draper and his fellow Mad Men [and a few Mad Women] under-
stood, was a competitive environment where people ignored rules and did
what they had to do to get ahead [as Joan Harris, the office manager, did
when sleeping with a Jaguar representative in exchange for a partnership].
Like the Sopranos, the ad men and women stabbed each other in the back
[more metaphorically in the ad industry than the mafia], stole business, used
political connections to get ahead, cut deals, and tried to eliminate rivals.
They had many practices in common, though on different sides of the law.
But what they taught viewers about the U.S., its society and economy, was
remarkably similar.