Don Draper versus Sheldon Cooper: Nostalgia
Don Draper stands for pure nostalgia in a world that has vanished forever. Here, I am neither talking of a character in an ill-starred series nor of a blockbuster watched by millions of teenagers around the world. Its peak audience was three million, no doubt many of them nostalgic Marketing, Sales and Advertising managers who, like me, have seen things you wouldn’t believe, like attack ships in flames off The Sword of Orion, C-Beams glittering in the darkness of The Tannhaüser Gate.
Don Draper represents the world as it was, the world of advertising and marketing we lived in when we were young, that we learnt about in universities and business schools and that we worshipped at advertising festivals. It is a professional world that both attracts and repels, a world of great opportunities and monumental failures. It is a world that the series' creator, Matt Weiner summed up in defining the attraction of the character of Don Draper: “Identification with one’s dark side.
Don Draper is pure emotion. He cheats on his wife but he still loves her, he cheats his clients but he wants to continue working with them; he is a heavy drinker and smoker but he never loses his cool despite the four dry martinis he downs with each meal. He browbeats his staff but also knows how to thank them for his stellar salary.
Don Draper enshrines Marketing as an art form based on hunches, a sixth sense, passion and conviction. He writes his own management manual, has his own style that is used in various academic research studies and publications for professionals. He also knows that the key to business success is controlling the underlying need — in other words, what the client really wants and that is not stated in the briefing. He stresses that the purpose of advertising is to make the consumer a little happier. Draper knows how to exploit emotions and his best weapons in his arsenal are furnished by his nostalgia for the history of Marketing. For example, there is the episode in which he explains to Kodak executives the real meaning of their carousel projector and that they should think like their customers. He asks them "If I were a customer, why would I want to buy this product?.
Draper has a key management skill: a gift for face-to-face communication, striking up a conversation in a lift and improvisation. One can summarise his communication skills in ten golden rules: (1) Always get up to speak; (2) Always tell a story; (3) Always be unpredictable; (4) Scan your audience and use the skills that work best; (5) Always use clients' ideas in one’s project so that they see it as theirs and can defend it to their colleagues; (6) Always use the key words at the key moments ; (7) Listen to one’s clients; (8) Hide one’s disappointment; (9) Be self-confident; (10) Conclude without boring one’s audience.
Notwithstanding the foregoing, Don Draper is 'old hat' and there is no place for him and his ilk in the new agencies on Madison Avenue. The new breed of marketeers and advertisers are geeks - young mathematicians and physicists. If Don Draper chalked up three million viewers, the paradigm of the new boys on the block is Sheldon Cooper who, with his troupe of millennials in Big Bang Theory have attracted over twenty-five million viewers in the various channels on which the series is shown.
Sheldon Cooper is the new 'Marketing Man', mixing science and art. His background in Theoretical Physics may make him the new super-star if he can get results. He develops Marketing Analytics, insisting on KPIs and result indicators. He does not lift a finger unless he has an MRO. His strength is not communication but rather Big Data. The team is human but their dream is to have software that allows them to automate marketing and that renders decision-making effective and unemotional. The new breed wear Ralph Lauren jackets and Oxford shoes, Bazinga or Superman shirts. Here, we have made the leap from Don Draper’s endless one-night stands to the hang-ups of Rajesh Koothrappali that stop him from even talking to a woman unless he is drinking. In contrast with Don Draper, Sheldon Cooper lives in a dull, lacklustre world.
Don Draper speaks in an episode about nostalgia: “A friend told me that nostalgia in Greek means pain from an old wound... a heart pang that sears more than mere memory.... it is what allows us to journey like children, knowing that we will return to a place where we are loved. Paraphrasing Lou Reed:, I do not like nostalgia unless it is my own. While Don Draper’s annual salary has been calculated on a web site at US $360,000, the wretched actor who has often stood in for Jon Hamm makes US $250,000 per episode. It is yet another sign of who we (the three million professionals following the series) really are. As we watch, we can lick old wounds as we are replaced by young American-trained Indian PhDs or mathematicians who do not drink Scotch but who have Big Data on their side.
All the old know-how is being washed away like tears in the rain.
