Many are going on about BBC 4’s current ‘Ad Season’ if you will, for many different and captivating reasons. The main point I am going to focus on is the valuable opportunity I am receiving of getting to see the ads that were, and are, famous in Britain over the past 50 years.
Many people, myself included, take for granted that by living in America the majority of my life, not only did I not have many of the products that I now have in the UK, even the products that were the same, the advertising was not.
Sitting with my husband -who will love advertising by the end of this ‘Ad Season’, if it kills him- he has memories and comments on many of the ads from the 80’s and 90’s, which I feel can only be beneficial to myself and my (hopeful) future career, regardless of where in the world I live.
Granted, if I really wanted to, I could have sat on you tube for a year and attempted the same amount of work, but I don’t think it would have been as effective.
As far as MAD MEN goes: It’s early days. It was okay. I’ve only worked in three ad agencies. Two of those were placements with two of Edinburgh’s top agencies and one of those I don’t even think is a real agency… however, I can see some similarities with modern day Ad (men) and then vast differences, plus it’s a tv show. One part I did not understand – and correct me if it was just different back then, and in America, the Account Handler, Campbell, wants the Creative Director’s job – is this feasible? Was this just pre team/Bernbach days?
I was an account man at Halls and I was desperate to work in the creative dept fopr a while. I saw sense of course when the MD at the time told me if I wanted a job in the ftreative det to resign and apply for it.
I didn’t have the bottle.