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Don Draper and company have made their last ad. After seven seasons on AMC, Mad Men is done. https://youtu.be/2msbfN81Gm0 Jon Hamm, the actor who portrayed Don Draper, spoke to the New York Times today about the show's ambiguous conclusion. "My take is that, the next day, he (Don) wakes up in this beautiful place, and has this serene moment of understanding, and realizes who he is. And who he is, is an …

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The last episode of the final season of Mad Men airs Sunday night. AMC's seven season human drama set inside an advertising agency is a wrap. How is the show going to end? Don Draper, the show's central character is presently lost in the middle of America. He's waiting for a bus on a country road. Will the bus take him onward to California, where his heart resides? Or will he head home to New York City and McCann, …

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I was in a Creative Director’s office when I first heard the term “critter” in reference to a spokesperson I was developing for an ad campaign. The CD was a bit of a hack and used it rather incorrectly. But it’s probably safe to assume that advertising critters of all kinds are well-documented in Meet Mr. Product: The Graphic Art of the Advertising Character and Mr. Product Volume 2 by Warren Dotz and Masud …

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I’ll admit I’d never heard of Josh Weltman, but boy does he bury the lede with his new book Seducing Strangers: How to Get People to Buy What You’re Selling. Because Josh Weltman is an LA-based veteran creative director who’s also a co-producer of Mad Men, and underneath the subtitle of the book is the sub-subtitle “The Little Black Book of Advertising Secrets.” And the book begins with a foreward by Jon Hamm. …

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I’ve met many agency CEOs and founders in my time. And if there’s one thing they all have in common, it’s that none of them know what they’re doing. I don’t mean that in a bad way. It’s simply that every agency is different and its principals always bring different skills the mix. There’s no blueprint that guarantees success. But Rick Webb comes very close to putting all the pieces together in Agency: Starting a …

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Let’s face it, few people who work in marketing or advertising want to admit they’re salespeople. But we all are, to a degree: We’re selling ourselves, our talents, our ideas, and our value all the time. So can a book like Jeffrey Gitomer’s Sales Bible help people in advertising and marketing? Of course it can. Gitomer’s quite well known in sales circles. He’s prolific and writes for many publications. It …

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These days, seeing a CEO appear in their company’s ads is quite common. But back in the 70’s, it was rare. So when NYC ad agency Scali McCabe Sloves convinced chicken processor Frank Perdue to star in his own ads, he was reluctant. But it turned him and his brand into a household name. That, and many other stories, are recounted in his wife Mitzi’s new book Tough Man, Tender Chicken: Business & Life Lessons from …

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In Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, Nir Eyal lays out a four-step process called the Hook Model for creating the types of products and services that keep people coming back for more. Although many of the examples he uses are online-oriented (Yelp, Twitter, The Bible App), there are plenty of lessons here for folks who make other things. I have to wonder if Eyal is simply looking for commonalities in all …

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