Last week, I was able to catch the second half of Advertising Week, which is an annual conference (the eighth one this year) held in New York City. It consisted of free pens, mints, crepes, cups of Nespresso, and five days of presentations and panels from both brand and agency sides. It was the friendliest professional get together I had ever been to—and most invigorating, I’d say—out of any of the conferences I have attended in the past. To my surprise, all of the panels I checked out had at least one woman on stage as a panellist (except for one: “Perfomance Display… The New Search?” which starred an all male cast from Google, Criteo, CBS Interactive, NBC Universal and Admeld). Although I am definitely no expert in advertising, I can say quite confidently that the Ad Man from the 60s (ehem, Don Draper) would be in the minority in the advertising world today.
In Aurora Dawn (1947), author Herman Wouk illustrates the exhilirating life of ad man Andrew Reale. He is loved by his colleagues, his boss, and most of all, his fiancĂ©e Laura, who he affectionately calls “Honey,” her stage name. If you have ever seen AMC’s Mad Men, you’d be familiar with the overtly sexist atmosphere at the office. I could only think of the famous scene in Dr. No, in which “Honey Ryder” and James Bond meet for the first time. (Video here.) In typical Bond film fashion, Honey is a beautiful young woman in a bikini (with dagger to boot), innocently looking for shells at the beach. She comes out of the ocean singing “Underneath the Mango Tree,” still unaware of Bond’s gaze. When they finally meet, she introduces herself as “Ryder. Honey Ryder.” But when Bond responds with a chuckle, she asks him, “What’s so funny about it?” Ignoring her question, he replies, “It’s a very pretty name. Tell me, honey…” and goes on with his world-saving strategies.
When I was doing selects for a company reel this summer, I was told by my boss to “focus on boobs.” The new commercials for Hope Lingerie, starring renowned supermodel Gisele Bundchen, and JCPenney are good examples of the Andrew Reales in the industry today. Â