AMC is push­ing the final episodes of its hit series “Mad Men”, which begin air­ing April 5, as #TheEnd­o­fan­Era. For many view­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly those in the adver­tis­ing indus­try, it is. Even though “Mad Men” is in many respects a time cap­sule of a bygone era, which has cer­tain­ly helped fuel its pop­u­lar­i­ty on a broad­er lev­el, there are still some prin­ci­ples that remain true in the ad indus­try today. The con­tent and out­lets may have changed, but the cre­ative process has not. Client inter­ac­tion is still vital. And it’s a show and an indus­try about human behav­ior.

As Momen­tol­ogy pre­pares for the final episodes of “Mad Men”, we talked to 19 adver­tis­ing exec­u­tives to get their take on what the tele­vi­sion show has revealed about the adver­tis­ing indus­try and what the show’s endur­ing lega­cy will be. Their com­ments fol­low.

Many laud the show’s atten­tion to detail, point­ing to iden­ti­fi­able sit­u­a­tions they have expe­ri­enced them­selves. They also talk about the allure the show has cre­at­ed for the indus­try over­all to those out­side of it. And, they say, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Josh Welt­man, “Mad Men” co-pro­duc­er, for­mer adver­tis­ing indus­try cre­ative direc­tor 

I think that the show came along at a time when adver­tis­ing was being upend­ed by the dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion in media.

“Mad Men” did a lot to remind peo­ple work­ing in the ad busi­ness that regard­less of media, old, new, tra­di­tion­al and social, per­sua­sion depends on some­one one hav­ing an idea that speaks to the wants, hopes and expec­ta­tions of anoth­er per­son.

I hope that idea lasts. I think it’s good to keep things between humans human.

Ger­ard Caputo, Exec­u­tive Cre­ative Direc­tor, BBH

For me, the fact that the show is in the adver­tis­ing indus­try is more cir­cum­stan­tial, in a way. I do think the thing that they have in com­mon is more about the peo­ple and the char­ac­ters.

Ad agen­cies are real­ly just about the peo­ple they have in them. The ad indus­try is about the indi­vid­u­als and those are the things that make it inter­est­ing or com­pli­cat­ed or hard or fun. It’s about the mix of peo­ple. “Mad Men” is real­ly about peo­ple — that’s the biggest con­nec­tion.

The show makes some pret­ty astute obser­va­tions about adver­tis­ing, which I think it most­ly cen­ters around Peg­gy and what she’s gone through. She’s devel­oped up through the ranks and has had a lot of chal­lenges Don Drap­er hasn’t had. She’s gone through things, been a vic­tim and had to change and adapt and take advan­tage of sit­u­a­tions. Those things were more her sto­ry arc and it feels like…some things peo­ple actu­al­ly go through.

[There are also] clas­sic sit­u­a­tions like I know that in the past I have heard of cre­ative direc­tors leav­ing boards in the car and some of those things that hap­pen that are very bad – the cre­ative direc­tor clichés – but it’s fun­ny how they did focus on that at times. And then some­times Don Drap­er feel­ing out of touch and get­ting back to the work again.

Cre­ative direc­tors may feel like they’re hav­ing to get clos­er to work and find their cen­ter of grav­i­ty, which is what he did in the last sea­son. Those things are inter­est­ing and feel a bit more true.

I think it’s one of the first shows [to do a] good job of get­ting close to what we do, but it’s still a fan­ta­sy. I think it will be remem­bered for hav­ing great characters…not nec­es­sar­i­ly an ad thing. But it does make peo­ple inter­est­ed in adver­tis­ing that maybe wouldn’t be…or it some­times feels the mag­ic of what we do – like the curtain’s been lift­ed and every­one is cre­ative and I think back then.

The show does a nice job of talk­ing cre­ative process, which is now lost in some ways. Now it’s more about tech, and I think maybe in some ways the lega­cy will be that it’s shown what peo­ple did was real­ly cool and maybe make peo­ple inter­est­ed and want to get into adver­tis­ing.

Joe Grimal­di, Chair­man, Mullen

I’m an avid “Mad Men” watch­er. I actu­al­ly pre­fer the binge watch­ing. When it’s drawn out, it’s annoy­ing. If I could, I would sit down and watch the entire­ty like a movie and then be done with it.

This is a show that actu­al­ly pen­e­trat­ed soci­ety and cul­ture and cap­tured imag­i­na­tion. If you recall, in the sec­ond or third or fourth sea­son, before it came back, peo­ple were hav­ing “Mad Men” par­ties and wear­ing the same kind of clothes or things that were sort of relat­ed to that era.

The adver­tis­ing busi­ness has always been very pub­lic and I don’t know if glam­orous is the right word, but it’s about putting ideas on film and shap­ing what peo­ple think about [them] and how they think about [them]…and there have been many, many shows and sto­ries about it. What the show gets a lot of cred­it is for the atten­tion to detail and excru­ci­at­ing research.

On the neg­a­tive side, it’s like any movie or sto­ry – there’s the vil­lain and antag­o­nist that builds the dra­ma and ten­sion. Were there peo­ple drink­ing and wom­an­iz­ing? I think the answer is yes. Was every­one doing it? No…but they paint the entire indus­try [as if it was ] very much into that as way of life and I think that’s what makes the show inter­est­ing. If it was about a guy who went home every day you’d end up with Ward Cleaver, who was just a good father and he was in the ad busi­ness.

I think what I iden­ti­fy with in the show is that a lot of the sit­u­a­tions that were por­trayed – not nec­es­sar­i­ly how they were por­trayed – but the real­i­ty is total­ly true. I’ve been in sit­u­a­tions in which you’re work­ing on a pitch and it comes down to the final day and the per­son you’re talk­ing to gets fired and now you have a dead pitch before you make a pitch, yet you have invest­ed all this time…I think that when you take out all the crazy drink­ing and crazy stuff and look at what’s going on, there’s a truth to that.

The new busi­ness pitch­es, the pres­sure on doing the work, the jock­ey­ing for posi­tion – those kinds of things real­ly hap­pen and hap­pen on a reg­u­lar basis. Some­one who is bril­liant implodes in front of you or is genius in cer­tain ways, but los­es real­i­ty in part and does some­thing on their own and cre­ates a major prob­lem for the agency. All of that kind of stuff is true.

As peo­ple look back at “Mad Men”, what it will have done is set a tone for the flair and style that did exist in adver­tis­ing and didn’t exist in oth­er busi­ness­es like bank­ing and real estate. And I think that it will also for a lot of peo­ple who aren’t deeply involved in the adver­tis­ing indus­try, make them think there are a lot of hard-drink­ing, crazy ass lunatics in that busi­ness.

I think peo­ple will remem­ber that this is a hard-dri­ving busi­ness of crazy peo­ple who go all out and not nec­es­sar­i­ly in the best ways. But what I real­ly think at the end of the day for peo­ple like myself inside is that we will reflect that it did cap­ture the real­i­ty of the biz and things that hap­pen in a very pro­found­ly mean­ing­ful way.

Tom Eslinger, World­wide Direc­tor of Dig­i­tal and Social, Saatchi & Saatchi

I’ve always thought of “Mad Men” as “The Sopra­nos” minus the mur­der with square jobs. Gang men­tal­i­ty, betray­al, odd­ball affairs and this guy at the cen­ter with cre­ative ideas to keep it all togeth­er, yet fail­ing to do the same for him­self.

“Mad Men” has a cadence that you always knew what was going to hap­pen: assas­si­na­tions, Man­son mur­ders, fash­ions, moon land­ing along­side the real “adver­tis­ing” things hap­pen­ing like mul­ti-nation­al takeovers, the rise of media as a cre­ative dis­ci­pline, and uncom­fort­able merg­ers that end bad­ly. That bal­ance of know­ing what’s going to hap­pen and not hav­ing a clue where it’s going at the same time had me hooked every sea­son.

I was real­ly lucky to start my career while still in col­lege and had pro­fes­sors and men­tors that did their rounds on the 1960s agency cir­cuit, like Hazel Gamec and oth­ers like P. Scott Makela and Charles Spencer Ander­son that were tak­ing adver­tis­ing into cool new places in the 1990s. For me, every episode remind­ed me that this is the most inter­est­ing place to work ever. Still. And keep a sense of humor about the whole thing: AMC should option ‘The Awe­some World of Adver­tis­ing’ Tum­blr blog and turn it into Mad Men 2015.

Is any­thing ad-relat­ed in the show still applic­a­ble today? Be absolute­ly bru­tal about get­ting the best, most amaz­ing ideas in front of our clients and cus­tomers.

Susan Cre­dle, Chief Cre­ative Offi­cer, Leo Bur­nett

The show unques­tion­ably influ­enced pop cul­ture, fash­ion and inte­ri­or design. It would be naive to say it did­n’t affect per­cep­tions of the adver­tis­ing indus­try.

Mahir Hos­sein, Senior Pro­duc­er, R/GA It real­ly “pulled back the cur­tain” and showed how agen­cies oper­ate from the point of view of cre­atives, account peo­ple, and more. Of course things have changed, and the show was not always the most real­is­tic, but a lot of what hap­pened is applic­a­ble to our work today.

We get an RFP, we pitch, we present work to clients. Some­times work is well received and some­times it isn’t. The show cap­tured the frus­tra­tions and the cel­e­bra­tions in a pret­ty real way.

Per­son­al­ly, it made me real­ize that some things nev­er change – they just progress. For exam­ple, they worked with print-out boards for their pre­sen­ta­tions, we work with decks.

One of the real dif­fer­ences is tech­nol­o­gy. Can you image what Don Drap­er would have done if he had had the Inter­net? Social media? I won­der what Don Drap­er’s Insta­gram would look like.

We live in fas­ci­nat­ing times – it’s fast paced com­pared to what it used to be, large­ly because of tech­nol­o­gy, Inter­net, social media, which makes infor­ma­tion shar­ing real time, you get infor­ma­tion in sec­onds now.

Tar­get­ing is also com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent, it used to be that they had two to three chan­nels (print, TV, radio) and that was it. You cre­at­ed a print ad and a TV com­mer­cial and put it out there hop­ing for the best. Today you can tar­get who­ev­er you want with by all the infor­ma­tion that is avail­able online on the dif­fer­ent plat­forms. You can cre­ate con­tent that is specif­i­cal­ly for that indi­vid­ual, some­thing per­son­al, with the high­er like­li­hood for ROI on that than a print ad or TV com­mer­cial that reach­es the mass­es rather than the spe­cif­ic audi­ence you want.

The agency world is def­i­nite­ly not as sex­ist as it was back then, and on the show, but I do feel women still have a hard­er time land­ing top posi­tions. The indus­try has def­i­nite­ly worked hard to change that, but there is def­i­nite­ly still work to be done. I think that’s true for all pro­fes­sions and not just adver­tis­ing. I would like to have worked with Peg­gy, she should have been the lead cre­ative at the agency and Joan was clear­ly more respon­si­ble than the exec­u­tives on the show.

“Mad Men” is all about human behav­ior. The show was great at get­ting deep into these char­ac­ters’ per­son­al lives and show­ing why they do what they do. I can def­i­nite­ly see how their expe­ri­ences are rel­e­vant to what goes on today, even though it’s been so long.

I’ll miss watch­ing Don Drap­er and Roger Ster­ling drink and smoke in the office. It set a real­ly cool scene and always left me wish­ing that we did that today.

Pierre Lip­ton, Chief Cre­ative Offi­cer, 360i

“Mad Men” is sin­gu­lar­ly respon­si­ble for mak­ing adver­tis­ing peo­ple inter­est­ing again at non-indus­try cock­tail par­ties. How? By telling sto­ries that some old-timers might actu­al­ly call tame ver­sions of the truth.

“Mad Men” did it all with beau­ti­ful writ­ing, style and per­for­mances. Or, as they would have put it back in the day, Copy, Art and Pro­duc­tion.

We will miss it every Sun­day, ad infini­tum (impru­den­tia pun). 

Jason De Tur­ris, Vice Pres­i­dent and Chief Strat­e­gy Offi­cer, CP+B

Ad peo­ple have been a one-dimen­sion­al stereo­type since their ear­li­est por­tray­als in the media. From the orig­i­nal “12 Angry Men” with a juror who speaks in shal­low yet catchy plat­i­tudes like, “Let’s run it up the flag­pole and see if any­one salutes,” to the all-con­sum­ing and con­niv­ing por­tray­al of an agency leader in “What Women Want.” They posi­tion us as sneaky oppor­tunists and slick sales­men.

I hope “Mad Men” would some­how recast us as the ulti­mate com­pet­i­tive advan­tage. The unsung and uncon­ven­tion­al heroes who solve prob­lems. But it all depends on how Don goes out.

Over­all, I’ll miss Draper’s bril­liance in the midst of mad­ness. The char­ac­ter vac­il­lates between flawed and flaw­less. I’ll miss the inter­nal debate that occurs when root­ing for some­one you admire and despise in the same suit. If you hate him, you’re not hon­est with your­self, and if you love him, you have to ques­tion why. It’s not an adver­tis­ing bat­tle, it’s a human bat­tle.

The show has taught us that every­thing new is old. We are an indus­try obsessed with look­ing for­ward. Every six months, there is a new media verb, plat­form or cam­paign that we “salute.” While tech­nol­o­gy has changed our indus­try immense­ly, the human fac­tor and inter­play with clients are pret­ty con­stant. It teach­es the time­less les­son that peo­ple who “get” peo­ple will get the best ideas from a tis­sue ses­sion to Times Square.

In grad school I was for­tu­nate enough to work on a doc­u­men­tary with some for­mer 1960s DDB icons. It was focused on the per­son­al­i­ties behind the orig­i­nal Volk­swa­gen cam­paign. I got to vis­it and inter­view Hall of Famers like Julian Koenig, Bob Levin­son and Roy Grace, to name a few.

Koenig, who passed away last year, was a direct link for me to the Mad Men era. Koenig has “Lemon,” “Think Small” and “Takes a Lick­ing and Keeps on Tick­ing,” in his cred­its. When reflect­ing on “Lemon,” he explained to me: “If you lis­ten to clients, you can hear them speak ads to you.”

Koenig called places like The Palm and Four Sea­sons the cafe­te­ria (mean­ing he ate there for lunch all the time). He didn’t labor in the office if ideas weren’t flow­ing. He defeat­ed writer’s block by head­ing to the horse track. He was a free spir­it and didn’t need to make apolo­gies because he was a mas­ter in his craft. He embod­ied both the flaws and flaw­less­ness that cre­at­ed ten­sion in his work.

Like many in the Mad Men era, the col­li­sion of ten­sion and truth led to work that will live for­ev­er. Thank you to them and thank you “Mad Men”.

Scott Mont­gomery, Prin­ci­pal, Bradley and Mont­gomery

To the degree that the sto­ry showed Peg­gy move from with­er­ing func­tionary to tough-mind­ed cre­ative lead, and how the con­text of the social changes of ’60s helped embold­en her, it was an inter­est­ing med­i­ta­tion on the rise of women in busi­ness – only to be con­front­ed with a whole new, per­haps more nefar­i­ous, lay­er of glass ceil­ings.

There are still laugh­ably few women in cre­ative depart­ments in the Amer­i­can ad busi­ness, and “Mad Men” served to point up, as it did on so many issues, that while it seems dif­fer­ent today, in impor­tant ways, we’re just as back­ward as ever.

Craig Moore, Cre­ative Direc­tor, Bradley and Mont­gomery

The era of the Mad Men is over. The ram­pant sex­ism, and out­ra­geous claims about a product’s ben­e­fits are not, and should­n’t be, prac­tices that are tol­er­at­ed by the indus­try.

How­ev­er, at its core there are some ideas that remain sol­id to this day. Ideas like boil­ing a brand down to its absolute sim­plest essence, find­ing what is unique about it and using that to mar­ket a prod­uct to its appro­pri­ate audi­ence are still key to suc­cess­ful adver­tis­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

The tools for iden­ti­fy­ing, and learn­ing about the audi­ence are far more advanced, and the tools for cre­at­ing the work are far more democ­ra­tized. The tools of the trade are now eas­i­ly avail­able and acces­si­ble by near­ly every­one on the plan­et.

We all car­ry amaz­ing cam­eras in our pock­ets, and we all con­trol our own media net­works where we broad­cast our thoughts, and hopes and dreams. On top of all of this, the tech­nol­o­gy plat­forms are con­stant­ly evolv­ing and improv­ing so that you can reach your audi­ence in a more mean­ing­ful and effi­cient ways.

While the media tech­nol­o­gy is vast­ly dif­fer­ent, the way good ideas are cre­at­ed are very much the same. My favorite Don Drap­er quote to this day, which feel still holds true is, “If you don’t like what’s being said, change the con­ver­sa­tion.”

Jean Mor­row, Copy­writer at BBH

I think one of the things that “Mad Men” did was it def­i­nite­ly made work­ing in adver­tis­ing seem sexy and it made more peo­ple want to do it. I know I’ve spo­ken to at least one per­son who was young enough that watch­ing “Mad Men” affect­ed his desire to want to be in adver­tis­ing at all. It was pow­er­ful enough of a show that it affect­ed his career path and has the abil­i­ty to do that for peo­ple who might feel cre­ative and not be sure how they want to pay their rent.

When peo­ple ask me about the show, if the show comes up, they ask me some­thing like, “Is it real­ly like that?” and I always say, “Yeah, it’s pret­ty accu­rate.”

One of the big things in the show is good ideas save peo­ple in the show. It’s how Peg­gy got her first pro­mo­tion – she had the best idea for the lip­stick way back in the begin­ning of the show.

There’s a lot of polit­i­cal stuff and nefar­i­ous activ­i­ties and there’s some truth to that, but if you have a good idea that is bet­ter than the oth­ers and the client likes it…there’s some­thing mer­it-based about how it all works. Great cre­ative ideas do kind of win and that’s enjoy­able to watch in the show.

It’s real­ly dark a lot of times and they’re doing ter­ri­ble things to each oth­er and that’s upheld a cer­tain truth to that in agency expe­ri­ence as well, but good ideas are still kind of the most impor­tant thing.