Can I shock you? I like Mad Men.

I know, right? Copywriter likes TV show where the lead character is a tall, handsome copywriter that earns loads of money, seduces lots of beautiful women, and enjoys a lavish lifestyle.

It’s wish fulfilment. Just wish fulfilment for us content creators.

And it is. Because when Mad Men came out, I was a junior copywriter myself. And the exaggerated TV world of 1960s Madison Avenue seemed as distant to me as the world of James Bond does to your average civil servant.

But it wasn’t the suits, the client-funded lunchtime drinking, or the parade of lovely ladies that were jarring.

It was the way they worked.

See, as a junior copywriter, and as a middleweight, and as a senior in-house copywriter, then as a comms manager and a freelancer, I’d work in a fairly straightforward way.

A client would say something like “here’s the website wireframe, can you replace the Lorem Ipsum?” or “we need 400 words for this blog post nobody will read, and you need to use the exact match keyphrase seven times. Then I’d go away and write.

That’s not how the copywriters in Mad Men worked. There’s this amazing scene where Don Draper pitches Kodak. It’s on YouTube. It’s called “The Carousel.” Watch it. 

The client’s tried to tell Don how exciting the technology is behind their new product. It’s like a spaceship! And he just flat out ignores it. And he tells a story. About how photographs are like a time machine. Backed by his own photographs, of his children, his wedding day, his pregnant wife.

The stuffy suits in the room start crying in a very non-60s way. That’s how affected they are. 

Because Don’s not bothered about features, or technology, or the amount of space he has to fill on a billboard. He doesn’t present any creative whatsoever beyond a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it slide. He just gives them a message. A powerful message. 

It’s not a space ship. It’s a time machine. 

The account is won, but we don’t see that. The copy is written and the artwork is arted. But we don’t see that. All we hear is the message. And all we see is the effect that message has.

If Don Draper was a real ad man, and not a fictional character, he might have had a name for that process.

He might have called it Message First.

Andrew puts out regular video content on LinkedIn every Tuesday morning. To be the first to see it, add him as a contact on LinkedIn. Or, subscribe to the Hampson Nattan Williams YouTube channel.