MAD MEN And The Art of Transformation

Art imitates life and in many cases, life imitates art that imitates life.

This may be the case with MAD MEN and stories of real world transformation.

MAD MEN, AMC’s highly acclaimed, very cool and stylish TV series set in the 1960s, focuses on a cast of characters at Sterling Cooper, a fictitious Manhattan ad agency and is set against the backdrop of pop culture, 3 martini lunches, black & white TVs, cold war anxiety and chain smoking.

Matthew Weiner, the show’s creator and executive producer, wanted to tell a story of a culture of transformation set during the turbulent decade of the ‘60s. The theme of transformation hits close to home.

In the wake of ground breaking TV shows like HBO‘s THE SOPRANOS and THE WIRE and NBC’s WEST WING and Studio 6O on the Sunset Strip, MAD MEN fills the void with well  written and  complex stories, snappy dialogue, high production values and all-too human characters that  are both  attractive and loathsome with entirely credible motives.

The series narrative snakes through a Life Magazine time line of political turmoil and social change in  the ‘60s, from the death of Marilyn Monroe, the assassination of JFK to the songs of Bob Dylan and in  this season, to the killing of the civil rights volunteer who was murdered with two co-workers in  Mississippi in 1964.

In the fourth season that starts this week, Sterling Cooper is starting over, as Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, and so is Don Draper, the agency’s creative director and central character.

When the series began in 2007, the main characters were established, slightly jaded players in a field that was on top of its game in a nation still puffed up with postwar confidence and superpower brio. Sterling Cooper was successful, Don Draper was married to a blonde model wife, had two kids in a Leave-It-To-Beaver suburb and an unraveling life. When Sterling Cooper’s British parent company was sold at the end of last season to an even bigger advertising behemoth, Don and his colleagues broke away and lost their complacency.

Suddenly they became small and scrappy without the huge accounts, vast office space and bottomless expenses of yesteryear. In last season’s final episode, Don banded his loyalists together to start a new firm.

The art of transformation is alive and thriving at SCIENCE CREATIVE.    

Our own metamorphosis as an agency along with the transformation of many of our clients is proof positive that a unique idea combined with hard working, entrepreneurial spirit continues to persevere in even these toughest of economic times.

Just look at MOTUS Motorcycles, an upstart American manufacturer building a new All-American high performance sport touring motorcycle or Seafood for the Future, a non-profit program working to ensure that sustainable seafood is readily available and easy to identify in Southern California or HIGHER GROUND ROASTERS, an environmentally responsible and socially conscious company that provides fair trade, organically and shade-grown premium roast coffee through honorable and ethical business practices to see how passion, pride and purpose can transform a dream into a business success.

So let’s raise a glass and toast to the promise of hope at the new Sterling Cooper agency and to the real  world transformation of brave and resilient businesses that continue to defy the status quo, no matter  what.

Cheers!