Mad Men Finale

[MarkD51]

I thought the last episode was a bit sucky myself, kind of a let down, and perhaps hard in just one episode to wind down and close a many year series.

Certainly not a dramatic, mind blowing finale, like Heisenberg in "Breaking Bad " was!

Yet, at least Don didn't go tumbling off some building, like the intro scene has always showed a man falling. I had thought for a long time, that that would be his demise.

[Bunky]

WARNING ----- SPOILER ALERT ----- IF YOU'VE NOT SEEN IT

DO NOT READ THIS!!!

At the end he was one with the whole experience, meditating on a Cliffside with the group, all in unison going into a collective.... hmmmmmmmm.

Fade's out and this ad starts up.

There are few extra details...when they do the ohmmm, you hear a ding, and Don gets a smile on his face then the commercial starts.

I do believe it was intended to make you believe Don went back to McCann and did the commercial. Remember in Joan's office the time in Nov 1970 and the commercial came out in early 1971. Coke was hyped several times in the last few episodes (Coke was "advertising heaven" and the broken coke machine Don dealt with at the motel). If you look at the Coke commercial there is a girl with pig tails and there was a girl just like her at the retreat. The ambiguity is just part of the ending.

This is mad men so there was no 90 mph chase or final shootout.

[MarkD51]

There are few extra details...when they do the ohmmm, you hear a ding, and Don gets a smile on his face then the commercial starts.

I do believe it was intended to make you believe Don went back to McCann and did the commercial. Remember in Joan's office the time in Nov 1970 and the commercial came out in early 1971. Coke was hyped several times in the last few episodes (Coke was "advertising heaven" and the broken coke machine Don dealt with at the motel). If you look at the Coke commercial there is a girl with pig tails and there was a girl just like her at the retreat. The ambiguity is just part of the ending.

This is mad men so there was no 90 mph chase or final shootout.

Yes, understand no shootouts, or stuff like that. I think to all who watched the series at least there was a relief to not see Don, or other key people go out in a bad way.

All in all, AMC has been putting out some pretty good shows the past 5-6 years.

Breaking Bad was of course a real hoot (yo), and I even like the Hell On Wheels Series too. Looking forward to the new season of HOW.

[Heisenberg]

I thought the last episode was a bit sucky myself, kind of a let down, and perhaps hard in just one episode to wind down and close a many year series.

Certainly not a dramatic, mind blowing finale, like Heisenberg in "Breaking Bad " was!

Yet, at least Don didn't go tumbling off some building, like the intro scene has always showed a man falling. I had thought for a long time, that that would be his demise.

Someone say my name?

[Bunky]

Yes, understand no shootouts, or stuff like that. I think to all who watched the series at least there was a relief to not see Don, or other key people go out in a bad way.

Betty had lung cancer. Meghan did not make it in the last few episodes.

[pointillistic_practitioner]

Do you think Don wrote the commercial? I think he is responsible for it. The 'real' McCann firm is who coined that originally. I'm of the opinion the finale was a little cathartic for Don if not a little depressing - nobody truly changes but you can at least feel accepted for who you are among some.

Great show!

I don't like to think he wrote it, I like to think he moved on with his life; though Jon Hamm, in an interview, seemed to imply that he did write it because "he is an ad man" (or at least he thought so). I think the end was left nebulous on purpose - Matthew Weiner wanted some ambiguity as to whether or not Don's smile leading into the Coke Commercial was b/c he realized he had moved to a different place, or b/c used his experience on the cliffside to get an idea about making the coke commercial with the kids in the coke commercial on the cliffside.

[cardaddy]

Yeah Al, I think there may been some sort of hint thrown there for sure. Wasn't it Peggy (or was it Roger) that said to Don there at the end "Don't you WANT to work for Coke?"

Knowing that Coke would indeed have been (and likely still is) the holy grail for an ad firm. (Knowing the budget they have, and that my wife's younger brother was there for right at 20 years as an Exe VP/CFO.)

There were certainly vague references to all sorts of "coke" in those last two episodes!

The seminal moment though for Don was at that meeting. In walked a consultant, NOT AN AD MAN from the firm, but (at least in his mind) a (perhaps not worthy) OUTSIDER that started spouting off the same lines that Don had built his career on. Setting the mood, the wind, the smells, the touch, the feelings of this person, and that.... the thoughts going through the minds of each individual (on set). Don took one look at that and was IMO thoroughly disgusted that a firm such as McCann wouldn't themselves have the talent 'in house' to do that job.

I mean as soon as the guy started talking, before Don made a move, I thought to myself.... SCHITE Don is gonna' have a freaking fit! Why? Because that WAS Don standing there talking. (In a different skin.)


One could reason that Don, in his epiphany there on the cliff realized "All these happy people, (drugs or not) just loving one another" and THAT is the thought going through his mind as he lie back and smiled. That was a birth of a new idea. That was something that McCann's outside 'consultants' could, and NEVER WOULD have come up with. Took a new thinking Don to figure that out. And as for actually going back to the grind.....
After all... that Park Ave. apartment money would only have gone so far, and he was SURELY cut out of anything else from the new firm. (Facing likely monetary penalties from them well beyond losing a multi million dollar salary.)

And.... as the story would go. Don Draper went on to be the (voice behind the) reason of that famous Coke commercial. (Albeit the real guru was Bill Backer.)

Surely enough coincidence to go around.

Here's an article that came out yesterday with one of the guys that spent his entire career at McCann, including Coke. He seems to think the SCP ads are "Kind of Crappy".

A McCann Man Talks About Mad Men -- Vulture


This article from the 18th on the Washington Post site is WELL worth a read.

‘Mad Men’s’ McCann: ‘Peanuts’ producer recalls how Coke’s backing altered animation - The Washington Post

AND JUST LIKE that, with TV product placement that was not only prime but also reportedly free, the series finale of AMC’s “Mad Men” Sunday night returned the work of century-old ad agency McCann Erickson to pop culture’s center spotlight. When [thar be spoilers] our reeling alpha-male Don Draper/#### Whitman (Jon Hamm) is ditched at an Esalen-like California retreat, left to chant in his khakis as the bell of mindfulness gives way to a wide, satisfied smile, we are fairly led to believe that this fictional McCann ad-man has just hit upon the idea for what, back in the real world, became one of the most iconic TV spots, and culturally resonant sales-jingle-to-hit-single tunes, in advertising history.

The song, of course, was “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing (in Perfect Harmony),” for the “I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke” ad dreamed up at a flight-delayed Irish airport by McCann’s Bill Backer, created in concert with top pop tunesmiths and soon sung by (in an era-appropriate name) the New Seekers. The “Hilltop” spot, featuring hundreds of young hires on a verdant Italian slope, spoke to a Vietnam era in search of something — love and peace, or wake-of-Woodstock community, perhaps even hopeful person-to-person connection — after a decade of turmoil and violence, of assassinations and persistent Cold War threats. And by capping his series with that one commercial, “Mad Men” creator Matthew Weiner evoked, aside from character narrative, the sense of transition as cultural transaction, as Madison Avenue caught up with the shifting mood of much of a nation.

For me, though, the ad also reflected just how much success Coca-Cola, as represented by McCann, had already had in the ’60s — as the business of peddling pop fluidly tapped into pop culture. And it prompted me to recall just how instrumental — about five years earlier — Coca-Cola was in the animated rise of Charlie Brown.
Thinking the same thing, after watching the “Mad Men” finale in California, was the “Peanuts” producer who first heard from Coke.

A listen in commercialization: “A Charlie Brown Christmas” (courtesy of Peanuts Worldwide/ABC/United Media)
Now, it’s worth noting that ever since its 1912 inception, McCann (which two decades later would merge with Erickson) had a particular appreciation of cartoon art. One of the agency’s five founders was Thomas Nast Jr., son of the legendary, Boss Tweed-era political cartoonist Thomas Nast (who also popularized the snowy-white popular image of Santa Claus — so commonly depicted on Coke products.). Nast Jr. was also a gifted illustrator, and at the firm’s launch, he designed the logo for what’s touted as the world’s first advertising trademark: “Truth Well Told.”

For at least a decade, the agency also employed a young Theodor Seuss Geisel, who honed his distinctive character types and animal drawings for such clients as Ford and Flit, GE and NBC, Schaefer Beer and Standard Oil — before he fully embarked on his career as children’s author “Dr. Seuss,” as his fame grew by midcentury.
But to get a sense of McCann Erickson in the Don Draper era, we jump to the mid-’60s, and the memories of Lee Mendelson.

Mendelson, a lifelong San Franciscan, had won a Peabody Award for a documentary on his native city’s history, which led him to make a much-lauded early-’60s TV documentary about future Hall of Famer Willie Mays. Next, having made a film about “the world’s best baseball player,” Mendelson decided to make a movie about “the world’s worst baseball player”: Charlie Brown. Mendelson called “Peanuts” creator Charles Schulz — a fellow Northern California resident by this point; Schulz and his son Monty had seen and liked the Mays documentary, and Schulz and Mendelson decided to work together.
“McCann and Coca-Cola had seen the 1963 [Schulz] documentary — which never sold,” Mendelson picks up the narrative, speaking today to The Post’s Comic Riffs. “They called in June 1965, asking if Schulz, [animator Bill] Melendez and I had been thinking about doing a Christmas special.

“I immediately said, ‘Yes,’ assuming we could develop something in a few weeks or months.”

Turns out, McCann Erickson didn’t want to wait a few weeks, let alone months.

“It was a Wednesday, and they said they needed an outline by Monday, as they had to make a quick decision, as other animated specials were being offered,” Mendelson tells me. “I called Schulz and said, ‘I think I just sold a Charlie Brown Christmas show.’ He asked, ‘What is that?’ And I said, ‘It’s something you have to write tomorrow, when Bill and I come up.”

Mendelson and Melendez headed up to Santa Rosa, the three masterminds collaborated brilliantly — and the project was offered.

“Coca-Cola bought the outline, and the show went on [television] six months later,” says Mendelson, who also hired Bay Area composer Vince Guaraldi. “It did a 45-percent share of the [national] audience, and went on to win an Emmy and a Peabody.”
And that special, of course, remains a classic, attracting millions of viewers with each holiday airing. Mendelson’s dozens of animated specials with Schulz and Melendez have attracted generations of fans — ahead of the first “Peanuts” CGI-animated feature film (due out in November).

That wasn’t the last time Mendelson and his production company would work with the agency, whose creative director was Neil Reagan — brother of the future president.

“A year later, we called McCann and Coca-Cola again and said we had the rights to do John Steinbeck’s ‘Travels with Charley,’ starring Henry Fonda,” Mendelson remembers. “They sponsored that as well, and it got an Emmy nomination.
“Years later, we did the Willie Mays program, ‘Tips on Baseball,’ which Coca-Cola also sponsored.”

So as the world was buying Coke, the soft-drink firm was also buying in to the worlds of others — sponsoring creative content that helped define the culture.
Listen to Mendelson, and you realize Don Draper is not the only man who can smile at what was accomplished then.