Don and Peggy start their own shop. Both win gold medals at the 1971 Art Director's of NY Hall of Fame. Peggy for an anti-war campaign. Don for True Story magazine. Their passion is their work. Their work is what they are. They get married. Don dies of lung cancer two months later. Peggy becomes one of the most powerful and respected individuals, man or woman, on Madison Avenue. Roll credits.
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6 comments:
well...I guess I get about 12 hours and 50 minutes of my life back.
I dig the Nam ad. I had two older sisters with boy friends who were called upon to serve before, during or after college. Man was it a long conflict. I remember thinking in my mid teens, I may serve in this war.....and I did. Hey, how long are we stretching out Afganistan? Got any ten year olds? Be worried.
Peggy and Don have no real chemistry. And does Don really enjoy the Job anymore? Peggy strikes me as the image near SHREW in the dictionary.
The ender has the rather understated argument that you RESPECT the BERT.
Don just pisses Peggy off. Work sadly, is her current lover. She will succeed to greater challenges and recognition but will sacrifice the warmth of the hearth and heart. I remember it well and then her daughter will have it so differently and never realize that such a struggle existed in the offices of corporations and boardrooms. Don will loose that charm and looks to the bottle.
True Story: NYC, late ‘90s. My first job in advertising. Long before they invent Mad Men, I’m disappointed no one on Park Avenue (sadly, the agency was not on Madison) looks like they work at McMahon and Tate.
Then I meet the author of the True Story ads. The ads hang in his office alongside other award-winning work and a photo of an America’s-Cup-looking sailboat I assume is also his. (It’s not. He just likes it. My second disappointment is that advertising doesn’t pay as much as I hope.)
The True Story Man is a senior partner at my agency. One of the few who still wears a suit and tie every day. Most of the others seem to forget their ties on a regular basis. Others show up on Fridays in black track suits and gold chains.
I’m a paper pusher but I want to be a copywriter. I tell this to the True Story Man. He’s encouraging and helpful. Tells me his story which involves growing up in a small town far from NYC. No whorehouses or false identities, but still rather Draper-esque. Then he tells me a true story about True Story.
One of the ads in the campaign (if you look behind the man in the ad you posted, there are four other ads; see the one at the upper left) depicts a “working girl” outside a hotel near Grand Central. The headline reads “It doesn’t take brains to make $25 an hour.”
Setting aside matters of political correctness and inflation, the True Story Man tells me the girl was actually a model. They shot the ad during rush hour one night. A gentleman, let’s call him Roger or Pete or Pete’s father-in-law, approaches the young lady and, oblivious to the photo shoot going on, offers a sum of money in exchange for certain services. The young lady kindly points out the photographer and the True Story Man.
The gentleman, quite literally with his hat in hand to cover his face, scurries off into the swarm of Grand Central; one assumes straight to the club car on the train back to Rye or Westport or wherever his wife and kids happen to live. True Story.
---Danny from Bellevue
I want to know what Don and Peggy's apartment looks like - I don't think it can top Don and Megan's digs.
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