The Errant Æsthete

Following on the heels of Michael Bierut’s brilliant post on Mad Men [EA 07/09/08] in designobserver, comes this fascinating first person account of similar ad tales from William Drenttel.

“I went to work at a place a lot like Sterling Cooper, “an old-school agency … run on smooth presentations, fastidious account handling, and, actually, three-martini lunches.” At the age of twenty-four, without an MBA, I became an assistant account executive at Compton Advertising. My charge: the Ivory Liquid account.”

When I started at Compton, account executives on Procter & Gamble generally had MBAs from Penn, Columbia or Dartmouth. We were white and generally male. We bought our (white) shirts at one of three places: Brooks Brothers, J.Press (”of New Haven”), or Paul Stuart. There were no other acceptable choices. I remember one black person, a messenger. I remember firing a female account executive who was not quite cutting it, and my peers giving me a wink over drinks.

My future wife, an aspiring writer before she discovered design, worked at the same agency in the early 80s — on the 4th floor while I was on 7. Her primary job, beyond getting coffee, was to protect her boss from his wife finding out about his mistress and his afternoon tyrsts. Twenty years after Mad Men, the culture hadn’t really changed that much. …MORE…