How To Be a Mad Man

The current issue of shots, issue 165, is our guest edited special in which London agency adam&eveDDB has curated a 'How To' special.

As part of that issue, creatives Matt Fitch and Mark Lewis interviewed chairman emeritus of DDB Worldwide and Ad Land legend, Keith Reinhard, quizzing him on how to be a Mad Man. 

What are the main differences that come to mind between the Mad Men era and today?

The main difference was we didn’t work together as teams. We had a copy department and an art department, and we also had a production department. So as a copywriter,

I was given a brief to write some copy for a press ad and at the end of the day the traffic person would come and collect it and give it to an art director who I had no knowledge of. If my assignment was to do a radio commercial then it was handed to a production person who would go produce the commercial. We had no teamwork at all.

So, Bill Bernbach, in ‘49, decided this was crazy and put the art directors and copywriters together and that was considered revolutionary.

Did you find it difficult to have your work brought to life without your opinion being heard?

It was horribly frustrating. I would type my ideas about what the visual might be and how the layout might be arranged and sometimes those suggestions were heeded but other times they were totally disregarded, and so the whole creative world applauded Bernbach when he said (the system) was crazy. Art directors and copywriters are both working on the same brief so they should work together and bounce ideas off each other.

How has technology changed the game?

One of my first television commercials was for State Farm insurance. The client was complaining, as clients often do, that their logo was not prominently featured. So, almost in spite, I wrote them a television commercial that for 60 seconds would have their logo on the screen while you heard a car screech and crash, and the logo was crumpled. Then you heard the sound of a hammer knocking it out and starting to repair it, followed by the sound of sandpaper sanding it and an airbrush painting it until it was fully restored.

Today, you could make that commercial in five minutes on a computer. But in 1969, we had to go to a company in Amsterdam who had to make 60 or so lead models of this logo in each phase of destruction and reconstruction, and then animate it frame-by-frame to achieve this effect.

There was also no electronic communication. We didn’t even have fax machines, so if the client was on the west coast and we were on the east coast these things were very time consuming. Even typing took longer. We used typewriters and usually had to put carbon paper in so there would be copies for the account people, and copies for the traffic people and so forth.

It was a painful process. We used pastel chalks to make layouts and then we had the smell of fixative which was used to make sure the chalks weren’t blurring and smearing. And then rubber cement, which was used to place the layouts onto boards. And there was also the smell of gin.

So, it really was the good old days?

Well, I don’t know if they were good but we thought they were, we were having lots of fun. One of our account executives opened his drawer at about 11 o’clock in the morning to open his gin bottle for the day. There was also the smell of cigarette and cigar smoke.

Every office and every conference room was filled with smoke. And there was, as the Mad Men series suggested, some licentious, or lascivious if you prefer, behaviour. In fact, I met the woman who was to become my wife as a result of this kind of behaviour! I had noticed this really attractive young woman who came into the account department as a trainee. I had no reason to have any interaction with her, but one night I was working late with my office door open and she rushed in and said “Mr. Reinhard, may I hide in your office?” and I said “Of course”.

She remembers hiding under my desk, but I don’t remember that part. I asked her why she was hiding and she named a top executive and said “He’s drunk and he’s chasing me around the hall and I need a place to hide”. Years later she was the vice-president of the agency and agreed to marry me. To this day, I’ve never admitted to the rumour going around the agency at the time that I had paid the guy $50 to chase her into my office.

It sounds like agency life was definitely better back then. But do you think the work itself was better or worse than it is today?

I think if you went back and looked at the entire product of the Mad Men generation, you would find just as much bad stuff in percentage as you find today. What we tend to remember when we look back on those golden days are the classics and the wonderful campaigns and advertisements that rose to the top. But there was a lot of really bad stuff being produced at the same time. So, I would guess probably the percentage is about the same as today.

A lot of people compare the rise of television to the rise of digital. What was it like working in those early days of television?

Back in the 60s it was radio with pictures, and it was black and white. I remember how excited we were when we heard that technology was going to deliver coloured television. Prior to using television for 60-second commercials we did a lot of our advertising ‘in program’.

It would be called branded content now, writing commercials for the cast of a comedy show and so forth. We used a lot of original music when television came along, which I don’t think is done nearly as much today.

It was quite effective and people can still remember those jingles from the past because music is a mnemonic. We wrote songs for Polaroid, American Airlines and Pepsi to name just a few. I myself wrote the McDonald’s jingle ‘You deserve a break today’ (named number one jingle of the century by Ad Age).

Today people do a brilliant job matching an existing tune to a strategy and then to an execution. John Lewis [below] would be an outstanding example of that. But we wrote original songs, taking a strategy and figuring out how to express it in original music.

Are there any lessons or tips from that golden era that you would pass on to today’s generation?

It’s important to remember that there is a difference between creating a buzz and creating a brand. There is a difference between an algorithm and a true insight into human nature. There is a difference between  a click and a true connection with a brand. There is a difference between a one-off stunt and an enduring brand story. And there is a difference between big data and a big idea.

At DDB we never believed in a formula for great advertising, we believed that rules are prisons, and that we should be about breaking rules. But we did notice over the years that the best of our work comprised simplicity, surprise and a smile. Surprise is maybe the single most important word in advertising. I would also urge you to keep the power of story in mind.

At the end of the 20th century we were hit with what’s been called the ‘digital disruption’ but I’ve started calling it the ‘digital distraction’ because it was taking our focus away from some of the basics. On  the back of my business card I have a cave painting to remind myself and others that storytelling, since time began, has been the most important communicator and former of society’s values and beliefs.

Now more than ever, consumers are able to choose what they consume and what they reject in terms of media content, so we have to be in the entertainment business or we’ll be out of business.

With that in mind, what’s your favourite ad of all time?

I think maybe the most important ad, in my opinion, is a 1959 print ad for a department store in New York called Ohrbach’s, written by Judy Protas of DDB. It’s a photo of a cat with a hat and a long cigarette holder, and it’s a story.

It’s one woman talking about another and the headline is “I found out about Joan”. The story says, in a very ‘catty’ way, that to see the way Joan dresses you’d think she’s married to a banker, but “I saw Joan coming out of Ohrbach’s”.

It’s remarkable because it’s one of the first examples of branding the consumer instead of the advertiser. The image is also so surprising and so arresting. But the reason I select that as maybe the most important ad is because it was that ad that attracted the first importers of the Volkswagen Beetle to the US and they said “We want the agency that’s doing the Ohrbach’s campaign”. So, that led to what Ad Age said was the best advertising of all time.

Speaking of the best of all time, how does one win a lifetime achievement award?

By being old! As I said in my acceptance speech (Reinhard was awarded the Clio Awards’ Lifetime Award in 2015), “I’m truly happy to be here, but then at this point I’m truly happy to be anywhere”.

But in truth, I feel young, and I try to stay young. I took a class in beginning content strategy in one of the New York organizations and the instructor was younger than any of my kids, but as Bernbach said, “If you want to create in the idiom you have to live in the idiom”, and I try to do that.

I think one of the main reasons I received that honour was the fact that a copywriter, with no college education and no formal training, went on to become a CEO and co-founder of Omnicom. Not enough creative people become chief executives of a major network. I’m very involved with the Berlin school of creative leadership and the mission of that school is that every creative organization ought to have a creative chief.

Finally, many of us wish we could have worked in the Mad Men era, but is the best time to work in advertising actually right now?

It’s been 60 years since I got my first job in the industry and I would happily sign up for another 60 years because now we have tools that allow us to create things we could never have imagined doing before, and we have all these new media channels that we can use to engage consumers.

It’s a really good time to get into the business and I’m gratified when I’m on college campuses and I see that there is still a great passion and interest among young people, and increasingly a lot of young women, to get into the advertising business and into the creative side of it.

I think we could be on the cusp of a new golden age, because we’re shedding our total obsession with the tools and getting back to some of the basics of connecting emotionally. I think it could be a very good time and I know you guys will do brilliantly. The future belongs to the brave, so my advice is be brave, be fearless, and carry on.