Coke did not pay for its Mad Men finale role

Coca-Cola's premium position at the end of the "Mad Men" series finale was the real thing, not a paid integration, according to the company. In case you were wondering, they did not pay for the placement. The brand just got lucky, scoring the kind of free exposure every brand would kill for, and sending off the series with a real warm-fuzzy. I guess that’s the kind of thing a hundred years or so of brand equity, and groundbreaking advertising from agency McCann Erickson, will do for you. And it helps to be in the right place – in advertising history, that is. Makes me ask, "Was 1971 really the end of advertising's golden era?"

Read the details, and related stories, in Ad Age

Mad Men Will be Remembered as a Television Milestone

With the Mad Men series finale behind us, there isn't much for me to add. I've been on the record as stating that Matt Weiner's two TV epics, The Sopranos and Mad Men, were the best things on TV. Mad Men, considering the incredible depth of its characters, its acclaim, its historical accuracy, etc. make it a TV milestone. In the near future, people will speak of television series in terms of "before Mad Men" or "after Mad Men." Talk about setting a "high water mark!"

The New York Times ran a pretty good recap of the finale. I know you'll want to give it a look, think about all those great characters, and smile. Not a broad smile, just a little one, like the one expressed by Don Draper on that hillside.

For a while, I suspect those of us who came to love that show, and its brilliantly developed characters, will feel a kind of emptiness not unlike the kind expressed by the man in Draper's second seminar - like we're sitting on the refrigerator shelf, waiting for someone to open the door.

Should Tiffany's new classically styled watch be in the same conversation as Apple Watch?

A new TV spot for Tiffany promotes the brand’s classically styled CT60 watch with “A New York Minute.” The spot – 60 seconds, of course – celebrates New York and the brand’s establishment of the “New York Minute” when Charles Tiffany put one of the city’s first mainstay clocks outside the store.

Wrapping up his Adweek / Agency Spy article, Eric Oster asks, "will it be enough to persuade them to purchase the classic design of the CT60 over Apple’s sleek new tech?"

On this topic, I have a question of my own: Are Oster and others asking similar questions around Apple’s launch even momentarily considering market segmentation? Or is he making the knee-jerk assumption that everyone will buy an Apple watch just because it's new, it's from Apple, and it has more functions, so therefore it will surely replace the traditional wristwatch?

It's not much of a stretch to conclude that the classically-styled watch and the 'sleek new tech' watch have completely different buyer profiles. I think those who are aficionados of 'fine timepieces' will view Apple watch as a joke; a gadget for nerds, like those nerdy digital watches from the 80's, and avoid it like the plague. 

Here's another observation. Is it just me, or does the "New York Minute" tag make you think of that dark, brooding Don Henley song? Yes, as in marketing and life itself, in a New York minute, everything can change.

Remembering Joel M. Van Citters: 1949-2015

When you develop personal and professional relationships over a certain number of years there will eventually be loss. People move on. They sometimes drift away. Sometimes, as in the case of my dear friend and former creative partner Don Adamec, they depart suddenly, leaving behind confusion and a sense of loss that is impossible to describe. In other cases, because you’ve been out of touch, news of their passing doesn’t reach you until a bit later.

I learned just the other day of the passing of Joel Van Citters. Talented, accomplished and supremely confident, Joel was a pleasure to work with. As an award-winning TV Producer-Director he knew what he was doing, had little patience for B.S., whether from clients or creative directors, and the clients, for the most part, admired the way he got the job done. We weren’t close personally, but I will remember very fondly the time we spent together and the quality work we produced together.

A few years back we worked together on a promotional video for Ringling College of Art & Design’s International Design Summit. When we needed a young woman to do some moves on camera, I suggested my daughter, whom Joel had never seen. Without hesitation and in a distinct "been there, done that" tone, he reminded me that when the client says, “Let’s use my daughter as a model, she’s really pretty,” it usually means she has a face only a mother could love. In this case, I sent him a few photos of Devon, who was then 18 years of age, and his response was priceless. He first wanted to know if I had a machine gun turret under the front porch to keep the boys away and, second, when can we shoot? Devon and Joel enjoyed working together. 

I’ve posted the video to the CCM YouTube Channel

Finally, here's the link to Joel's Herald-Tribune Obit

Finally, from Toyota, something that really is bold.

Toyota’s "Más Que un Auto" (or "More Than a Car") campaign, created by its Hispanic agency Conill, represents a good move by the brand, which is celebrating its tenth year as the most-loved auto brand among the Hispanic community.

Yes, the auto brand that I think ranks right up there with Honda for the category's dumbest advertising seems to be getting it right in social media, doing something that is meaningful and engaging.

Toyota has discovered that in the Hispanic community, people are far less likely to regard their rides as mere 'appliances' to get one from point A to point B. Indeed, the cars are members of the family. Anne-Christine-Diaz's story in Ad Age describes the campaign, conceived to help people celebrate their love for and dedication to their rides. The essence of the campaign is a small, symbolic badge that Toyota owners could place on their cars bearing the unique names of their automobiles.

In my non-Hispanic family, we were nuts about our cars and the “fleet” was pampered. 

Not much to say here aside from, “Toyota, you finally got something right.” This social media campaign makes far more sense than Toyota’s advertising, which is still trying to convince people there is something “bold” about the new Camry.

The Emperor of All Maladies

Cancer is a big topic. It's a major killer, a cruel riddle that science has yet to completely solve. Even though we know so much more than we did a few decades ago, people continue to die with/from all kinds of cancers.

The PBS documentary Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies is a film by Barak Goodman, based on the book by Siddhartha Mukerjee, MD, PhD. Its first installment focused on leukemia and the inception of modern cancer treatment, beginning with Dr. Sidney Farber's efforts to chemically treat childhood leukemia in Boston.

The film also features one particular philanthropist who was almost singlehandedly responsible for increasing federal funding of cancer research by more then 2000 percent. Her name was Mary Lasker. Upon hearing the name Lasker I was jolted into recollection of her late husband, Albert Lasker, the advertising industry pioneer. Lasker was one of modern advertising's trailblazers, his agency was the Chicago firm of Lord & Thomas. He later sold the firm to three staffers, which gave birth to a shop called Foote, Cone & Belding.

Following her husband's death from colon cancer in 1952, Mrs. Lasker put the arm on everyone - from her socialite friends to three or four presidents of the United States - to get cancer research funded. Her efforts, combined with Dr. Farber's created what is now known as the American Cancer Society, fueled the "War on Cancer" and expanded the National Institutes of Health.

Where am I going with this? There are two things that haven't escaped my mind since viewing that first installment. First, a major irony. Albert Lasker made a fortune in the advertising business. More specifically, it was he who first persuaded women they could stay slender by smoking Lucky Strike cigarettes! Second, in terms of public funding for research, why can't we do the same thing for Alzheimer's?  

The one major difference between cancer and Alzheimer's? With cancer, there are survivors.

Limitations should indeed be reimagined as opportunities

Strong brands are really all about constraint. The role of marketing and communications is to find the edges of a brand and create within those limitations. As soon as a brand starts relaxing their constraints, it will be the brand that becomes weaker.

Indeed, there are countless examples of how constraints – seemingly confounding as they were confining – have resulted in brilliant creative solutions. Without constraints in language and messaging, budget, time, etc., brands tend to become too “full of themselves.” They go a little nuts with big production values, big celebrity endorsements and things that are less and less essential to the brand. In doing so, they wind up "talking to themselves." They shoot themselves in the foot and become more and more forgettable.

Sarah Shearman’s Campaign post is definitely worth a look.