Bye, Bye Patio

For me, one thing that would make Mad Men better is if their efforts to market products took a bigger role and the behind the scenes drama took a smaller one. I would think Don Draper was as big a cad if he slept with 1/3 less women. It is around the time of this show that marketing started to transition toward the needs of the consumer. Prior to this the focus was either on: Production- If I make a lot of a high demand product, people will buy it; Product- If I make a high quality product, people will buy it; Selling- If I take an existing product and use different techniques to sell it, I can sell high volumes of it.

It isn’t until around 70s that conducting market research to ascertain customer tastes and designing the product with that in mind came into practice. This is a great simplification of what the different approaches were. What I have wanted to see is the company evolving toward new approaches as competition for business pressed them. The show is still pretty enjoyable in any case.

There was one episode this season, episode 4, “The Arrangements,” whose subplots resonated with me. The main one revolved around the commercial for Pepsi diet soda, Patio. The Pepsi representative wants an ad that inserts their product in a reproduction of Ann-Margaret in the opening scene of Bye-Bye Birdie (seen below). The guys at Sterling Cooper recreate the opening flawlessly, so much so I imagine there would be intellectual property lawsuits had it run without the movie studio’s permission. In the end, though everyone agrees the commercial is exactly what was requested, the Pepsi representatives say there is something wrong with it. They just can’t put their finger on it. After the clients leave, one of the ad men points out what is wrong is that the woman in the commercial isn’t Ann Margaret.

For me it was illustrative of the problem you face when trying to jump on a popular trend. If the original does well, you can only fail in the comparison by trying to copy it exactly. The best you can do is put your own original spin in something and even that may fail. Most attempts at recreation and revival are made after the impact of the original has started to fade from people’s memories.

The whole idea of riding the coattails of popularity is still new to the characters in the show they are puzzled when their attempt fails. Even though it is disappointing to them, it sort of excites me to know there was a time when advertising wasn’t as slick and calculated as it is these days. In truth, there are still areas where advertisers are stumbling today. This Friday on the On The Media radio program, there was a piece responding to a New York Times article about how DVRs are actually helping to improve the television ratings used to determine advertising rates because people AREN’T skipping commercials as everyone, including the people selling the machines, assumed they would. Shows are actually getting better ratings three days after airing than they did on their air date thanks to DVRs.

Ann Margaret

Mad Men Ad

The other part of the episode that connected with me was where a young guy comes in wanting to promote the sport of jai alai. He has a lot of money to spend and some grand ideas about how to promote it. Personally, I didn’t think the efforts would be successful, but figured maybe they were appropriate for the time period. Turns out, the ad guys figured they had a fool from whom they would soon part his money.

The thing that struck me was that as he left the meeting, the potential client said “If jai alai fails, it will be your fault” to which one of the ad guys said something to the effect of “everyone believes that.” It brought me back to a couple places I worked where the attitude was when the show did well, it was a good show but when the show did poorly, it was because the marketing department did a poor job. The truth is, there are some things the public isn’t interested in seeing. The world record audience for jai alai was set in 1975 with 15,500 people. As of today, the Philadelphia 76ers have the worst average home attendance in basket ball with about 12,000 people. The Minnesota Timberwolves which falls at 15th of 30 teams in attendance averages 17,600 people. (Source: ESPN website)

And by way of comparison, in their 1975-76 season, the 76ers averaged 12,400 in home attendance. In 1964, the year Mad Men is currently, 76ers average attendance was 4,300 (NY Knicks were about 9,200). I am sure there was a lot of promotion and work done to make basketball more popular since 1964. The presence of players like Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell probably helped excite the imagination of crowds in ways jai alai players didn’t. It is intangibles like the structure of a product and the personalities associated with it that create an interest in it that a lot of money can’t buy.

Well, okay, there is a lot of money being spent today to bring personalities and products together. But back then and in the trenches of arts organizations today, lots of money thrown into marketing can’t assure success. (Which assumes there is a lot of money to throw into marketing.) Actually, I can go full circle with this. The fictional ad the Sterling Cooper boys put together for Patio soda didn’t work because they didn’t bring the correct personality together with the product. The real Patio did capitalize on the personality of brand identity and became Diet Pepsi in 1964. The other Patio flavors were later phased out “because soda consumers were primarily interested in brand-name products.”