“Advertising is based on one thing: happiness. And do you know what happiness is? Happiness is the smell of a new car. It’s freedom from fear. It’s a billboard on the side of a road that screams with reassurance that whatever you’re doing is OK. You are OK.”
This is one of Don Draper’s opening lines of Mad Men‘s pilot episode which resonates throughout the themes of future seasons. It’s 11am and a client meeting is in full swing. All the attendees are smeared behind a wall of cigarette smoke whilst knocking back a glass of whiskey, watching a presentation on poster-sized cards. Welcome to Sterling Cooper advertising agency, New York, 1960.
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