Mad Men and Great Pumpkins

by Allen Caudle, Vollmer COO

This week another great season of Mad Men will come to an end. Having started my career with a major international ad agency, Ogilvy and Mather, in 1976, I watch this program from a different viewpoint than most. I experienced David Ogilvy coming for a visit to his Houston office. The experience was exactly, and I mean exactly, as was told earlier this season when the owners from London came for an inspection, er visit. I recognize all the Mad Men characters as people I worked with. I heard the stories told on this program not of legend but of what happened last weekend! I pulled the all nighters to get out a proposal that had to be rewritten because of a new great idea from the creative department. And yes, we imbibed in various creative stimulants. The writers have truly captured the heyday of advertising. Those days are long gone.

I heard a story last week that confirms advertising as we knew it is gone forever.

A friend of mine sat down last week with his wife and two year old son to watch the annual airing of Charlie Brown’s Great Pumpkin. They gathered on the couch in front of the TV as the program began. They viewed the first segment of the program and the parents were pleased to see it not only held the attention of their two year old but he was fully engaged in the program. The first commercial break came and Mom got up and went to the kitchen to make a snack, Dad and son remained on the couch. After about 30 seconds the two year old started to squirm and whine, stood up on the couch looking around. Dad assumed he just missed Mom. As she returned, the program came back on and the two year old settled back into enjoying the program. When the second commercial break came on the two year old began to scream and squirm reaching for the television remote control. This went on for more than three minutes while all the commercials aired. Charlie Brown returned and the child calmed down. The third commercial break brought a repeat of the clear displeasure. Soon the parents understood the problem. Their son had never watched commercial television before; he had always watched public television, DVDs or recorded television with his parent’s fast forwarding through the commercials. He believed that when the commercials came on they had changed the program on him and he wanted to see more of the show. This next generation of television viewers will not tolerate the commercial break.

Our household has come to a point that we rarely watch commercial television at the time of the program. If something we want to watch is about to come on, we’ll find something else to do for 20 minutes to give the program a head start so we can FF through the commercials and not lose continuity of the program. This next generation will never view commercial television the way it was originally designed.

The ripple effect of this phenomenon is massive. If viewers don’t watch the commercials the advertisers will stop buying the commercial time. If the advertiser dollars aren’t there commercial television can’t afford to produce programming. Without programming or revenues the networks are dead. And then there are the advertising agencies who I’m sure are scrambling to justify every advertising dollar spent with volumes of research that show people still watch good commercials. Maybe so, but the Great Pumpkin has appeared and the next generation of viewers will not be reached via traditional television.

What’s the answer?

Advertisers know they must communicate with their audience in new ways. The ad agencies will tell you traditional media can do what social media cannot: aggressively interject messages into people's lives in a socially acceptable way. Research conducted by the Advertising Research Foundation indicates that messages delivered by TV may, in fact, be the fastest and most cost-efficient means to jump-start productive conversations in the digital and real worlds.

Experts at the World Advertising Research Center have also studied what it takes to optimize engagement in a conversation economy. They recommend this media priority:

• Mainstream media.
• Open networks such as blogs and websites.
• Closed networks such as Facebook and MySpace.

The only fallacy in this theory is we don’t watch the commercials any longer.

Public relations firms will tell you the consumer no longer wants to be told what to buy as with advertisements of the Mad Men era. Now they want to learn more on their own, talk to others, listen to what actual users have to say.

We must engage with the consumer and involve them with the product or service as well as the company if we want them to buy from us.

I’m happy to say public relations counselors are firmly entrenched in the social media space developing strategies and tactics that meet the consumers need to feel engaged and involved in the purchase decision.

Both advertising and public relations are games best played on the edge. We are on exciting new frontiers with social media on the rise and mainstream media suffering a slow and painful death.

You’ll find me out on the edge looking for the next great opportunity. Right now that means crafting meaningful messages that are candid and personal. Because not since the door-to-door salesmen have consumers been more engaged in the conversation that makes the purchase decision.

Do I miss the good ole days of advertising? Let’s just say I’ll never forget the three martini lunch when we got approval to freeze a car in a block of ice and melt it in Death Valley to demonstrate the protection of Shell’s new motor oil Fire and Ice. And I will always think fondly of my round of golf with Arnold Palmer after a Pennzoil commercial shoot. There are more good times to come, what a great business I’m in.