The Real Mad Men & Women of Washington

By Frank Ahrens
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 21, 2008

Ah, early 1960s corporate America. Sharp suits with pocket squares. Brylcreem. Smoking in the office, a decanter of good Scotch on every executive's sideboard and multi-martini lunches. A great time to be alive.

Assuming you were a white, Protestant, heterosexual man.

Such is the deliciously vile approach of "Mad Men," and it's why Washington's advertising industry latched onto the show last summer, watching with a mix of misty nostalgia and slack-jawed horror. Today, the show's main character -- handsome Don Draper, an adman irresistible to clients and women alike -- would be a dinosaur, albeit a stylish one.

What else has changed in advertising since 1960?

The Mad Men and Women of Washington said today's niche-driven ad industry must work harder than ever to reach all types of consumers; advertisers are no longer satisfied with mass-market campaigns aimed solely at white, traditional families. Although casual racism, anti-Semitism and misogyny in the show is not nearly as visible in today's agencies, neither has it disappeared, they said. Mostly, today's ad execs said they can't get by on a slicked-back hair and a slick pitch.

"I think Don Draper existed in the Camelot days of advertising, when a strong personality and a dashing rock-star approach to the business got you pretty far," said Chuck Husak, creative director of August, Lang & Husak in Bethesda. "Today, ad people are being called on to be much more accountable and responsible with their recommendations than they ever were."

In 1960, the ad industry was a Gotham-based priesthood. Advertisers bowed before the adman's implied knowledge of consumer desire, bolstered by his expertly delivered rap, peppered with trendy pseudo-psychology.

Today, improved consumer research -- including instant and deep feedback on the Internet -- has sapped much of the priesthood's power. Advertisers and consumers are both savvier, the Washington ad execs said.

New York remains the center of the U.S. ad industry, dwarfing Washington and other vibrant but smaller regional markets. Washington-agency clients include the military, defense companies, policy-advocacy groups and, because of the area's diversity, big consumer companies seeking targeted audiences, such as gay and minority buyers. Clients include the National Guard, the Navy, the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, National Geographic and NPR, among others.

Washington's ad clients generally don't have big bucks to blow like their New York brethren, Husak said.

He recalled a recent TV ad by a New York agency, a slickly produced bit in which a robotic woman is revealed to have a keg of beer inside her.

"They get away with that kind of un-conceptual tripe because the execution is so polished," Husak said. "In D.C., no one has $700,000 to throw at a non-starter idea like that."

In "Mad Men," aired on AMC and produced by Lionsgate, overt sexual harassment is an office sport and racial and religious castes are strictly enforced. But today's workplace is not free of such ugliness, noted Matthew Weiner, the show's creator.

"Most of the racist and sexist lines I've written for the show, I've overheard in my life," Weiner, 42, said in a recent interview, citing today's Hollywood, Wall Street and ad agencies as sources of the offensive dialogue.

At agencies in the early '60s, women generally rose no higher than secretary. Often, they were brought into pitch meetings to make male clients more comfortable, "to remind them of a domestic situation," Weiner said.

Cary Hatch, 52, president of Washington's MDB Communications, entered the ad industry in 1978 and largely avoided the almost-perfunctory lechery depicted on "Mad Men."

Even in 1978, however, almost all women still started at agencies as secretaries, she said, though she got lucky: Her talents landed her in the art department instead of behind a Selectric. For the photo accompanying this article, Hatch enjoyed dressing like an office vamp of the "Mad Men" era, all curves and cunning, complete with up-do and heavy eye makeup.

But she said she never had to be that kind of woman to succeed in the workplace, though she received her share of ogling as a young ad woman. She recalled one time when she and a male colleague had just pitched an idea to an advertiser.

"On the way out, I heard [the advertiser] tell my colleague, 'And when you come back, bring sweet cheeks with you,' " Hatch said. "So much for my good ideas. It was more about my view from the rear."

Ronald C. Owens, 69, who co-founded Arlington's Laughlin, Marinaccio & Owens, left the integrated U.S. Army as an officer in 1970 and entered an industry short on minorities. "I was the only fly in the buttermilk," he said.

Intrigued by advertising, Owens found the agency that held the then-tiny U.S. Army account. Playing a hunch, he convinced the firm that the Army account would grow if the draft ended and that the company could use a military man to help manage it. Three years later, when President Nixon established the all-volunteer Army, Owens was proved right. His firm, Philadelphia's N.W. Ayer & Son, crafted the legendary Army slogan "Be all you can be."

Had Owens left the Army 10 years earlier and landed a job at "Mad Men's" fictional Sterling Cooper agency, "I would have been in the mailroom or in some other menial position," he said. Black characters on the show either run the elevators or push a sandwich cart, something Owens witnessed at New York agencies in the '70s.

Before starting his own company, Owens passed up opportunities to go to the smaller, black-run firms that started to pop up in the late '70s and early '80s, as advertisers began to realize that niche ads aimed at minority buyers should no longer be overlooked.

Luis Vasquez-Ajmac and Wesley I. Combs have built their careers on just such niche markets.

Vasquez, 47, started Washington's Maya Advertising in 1990 and recently opened an office in Los Angeles, both aimed at delivering advertising to Latino audiences.

Vasquez got his first lesson in the power of brand-building as a community leader during the riots in Washington's Mount Pleasant neighborhood in the early '90s. When appearing on television and issuing press releases, he referred to them as "disturbances" instead of riots, a phrase that was picked up by the media.

Soon after, he was approached by ad giant Ogilvy & Mather and asked to start its Latino division. He turned it down, but it gave him an idea. "I figured if I was good enough for Ogilvy," Vasquez said, "I was good enough to start my own business."

One of Vasquez's challenges today is convincing advertisers that the Latino market is not homogenous, that it has as many niches as the Anglo market. He also is disappointed when he sees what he calls "trans-created" advertising: Ads written in English and featuring white characters that are simply translated into Spanish with the expectation that Spanish-speakers will identify with them.

Combs, 45, partnered with Bob Witeck to found Washington's Witeck-Combs in 1993, aimed at the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender market, telling major companies how to reach the often-affluent, taste-making groups at a time when gay visibility was rising, particularly in Washington.

Gay-niche agencies like Witeck-Combs have seen major companies draw unwanted attention when targeting non-heterosexual customers. Ford and McDonald's, for instance, have been boycotted by social-conservative groups, upset that the companies are reaching out to gays.

Combs said he can think of two instances when Witeck-Combs lost potential clients when they discovered the firm is gay-owned and focuses on gay issues.

"In fact, some clients encouraged us not to reveal our sexual orientation to their contacts for fear of repercussions and discrimination," Combs said. "This idea is still perpetuated by some to this day."

To help overcome bias toward the gay market, Combs has mused about presenting it to advertisers simply as a group of statistics, which they would find appealing: consumers who are generally higher-income, educated, fond of luxury goods and travel, and who are heavy media users. Then he would reveal to advertisers that those traits belong to gay and lesbian buyers, a market they should be courting.

Beth Rilee-Kelley, 47, a partner in Richmond's Martin Agency, laughs when she watches TV's "Mad Men" spend an entire episode coming up with one catchphrase when she would have juggled a half-dozen campaigns during the same time.

She entered the business in 1983 and was lucky to have mentors who treated her as an equal. But she knows it was not always so.

On "Mad Men," Peggy is a bright young secretary who has worked her way up to be a junior copywriter. Joan runs the steno pool and is the mistress of a senior partner. She doesn't understand why Peggy would want a "man's job," Weiner said.

Rilee-Kelley thought of the two female characters while sitting for the photo with this article.

"I felt I was doing something for all of the Joans and Peggies of 1960," Rilee-Kelley said. "I thought, 'It's 2008 and I'm a partner in one of the great agencies in the world. This one is for you, babe.' "