In the above post, you quote a post by someone named “Alexandra”.
But try as I might, I can’t find any post by Alexandra anywhere.
Can anyone tell me what might have gone wrong?
That conversation actually started in last week’s Mad-Men thread. here (toward the end)
I think she was just being a spaced out hippie and I suspect there were a lot of people at the time who doubted that it could be pulled off successfully.
Would any ad agency of that size have purchased an IBM Series/360 back in 1969? I’m a little confused as to what it would have been used for as well. I wonder if people today realize just how little power those things had back then - the base 360 came with 4kb of RAM. That’s not a whole lot of memory. And they were only a small fraction of the speed of a smart phone today. Inputting data into them was tedious.
I just looked up the cost of a 360. IBM would lease one to you for a monthly cost ranging from $2700 for a very basic unit to $115,000 for a unit with 8mb of ram (enough for a couple of MP3 files today). The purchase price ranged from $133,000 to 5.5 million.
Add in the cost of energy (these things consumed a LOT of energy and needed large dedicated air conditioners to keep them cool), a support staff, and you had to have a damned good reason for owning one of those things. And I got the sense that the partners weren’t even sure what they did - just that the other guys have them, so they had to have one too. If that was the logic, it was one of the biggest examples of bad decision-making that show ever had.
Using the inflation calculator, $2700/mo is the same as about $17,000 today. And that’s for the absolute smallest unit with no peripherals. The type of installation shown in the show was probably at least 3-4 times that amount. Add in support staff and energy and all the rest, and we’re talking somewhere between $50,000 and $100,000 per month, minimum, in today’s dollars.
How much analysis would even a very large company today put into a decision that was going to cost that kind of money? Are we to believe that a computer like that could provide enough value to an ad agency to justify that cost?
In terms of the show, I’m sure it was just symbolic - we’re ending the series with the start of 1970, man will have walked on the moon, and it’s the space age. Computers are taking over. So of course the seat-of-the-pants ad agency would have a giant computer by the end. It makes sense in terms of a narrative arc, I guess. I just wonder how much sense it would have made in real life.
As for Don’s behavior - I didn’t think he was behaving badly with Peggy - I thought she was being an ass. Maybe he deserved it, but Peggy isn’t a very likeable character anymore. She’s pretty much a bitch to everyone around her.
Let’s recap: Don gave her a huge break when she was young, in an era where that just didn’t happen to women. He went to bat for her repeatedly. He went to see her when she had her kid. The worst thing he did to her later was to be a little dismissive and not be thankful enough to her (“That’s what the money’s for!”).
So Don has his own personal meltdown, and takes a leave of absence. Then he comes back chastened and demoted. You’re told he has to work under you. How would you handle that situation? If it were me, I’d call him in and say, “I know this is going to be hard. I have immense respect for your ability, and I know what you’ve done for me. However, I am the boss now, and I have to maintain the chain of command. So I’ll have to call the shots, and I hope you can handle that.” Then in meetings I’d maintain control, but I would act reasonably deferential to him. He’s earned that.
Instead, what does Peggy do? She treats him like a junior copy boy. Sits him down with a young kid and talks to them like they’re at the same level. If I were Don I probably would have walked out at that point. He was doing everything he asked - he didn’t need to have his face rubbed in the dirt too.
But it’s obvious to me that they didn’t want him back, and the conditions they offered were designed to force him to refuse. They wanted him to go away, and they were shocked when he accepted them. He was also very stupid to accept them - he was seriously willing to put his partnership on the line under conditions like that? That had to be worth millions. It made no sense.
If Don had been thinking straight, he should have countered with, "Tell you what: You give me my old job back, and I’ll sign an agreement that I’ll stay sober and give you the right to release me from the position if I don’t bring in more contracts than the current guy within 6 months. And if you don’t like that, I’ll just show up at every partner’s meeting and demand my say in running the place, as is my right. That will give me more time to give those interviews to the media that I’m always being bugged about. You know how they always come looking for the dirt on what goes on inside an ad agency.
Or, you can release me from my non-competition agreement and buy back my partnership shares at their current value, and I’ll be on my way. It should be fun competing with you guys."
That quote really ties into what happened in the last two episodes. Peggy is in it for the recognition, not the money. People like Don and Lou don’t get that. Does Joan?
I think wadding up a bunch of dollar bills and throwing them in someone’s face is more than “a little dismissive.” Don was a full-on jerk to Peggy in every possible way last season. That she blames him (a little unfairly) for Ted’s decline and fall is just icing on her hate cake.
Yeah, I think it’s about 98% Ted as well as getting away from Don and SCDP and then being merged back in. I’ve got no sympathy for her however because - after some denial - she purposely tried to be a home wrecker.
Eh, if it’s socially acceptable that people leave their spouses or partners for new partners, then it must be okay to do the immediate necessary preceding step, which is to seek to transfer someone’s affection from old partner to new partner.
I talked about this is last week’s thread, but here a quick recap.
Every major agency had a computer by 1969. SCP was at a huge disadvantage. Whenever they talk about billings on the show - like Burger Chef billing $3 million - they’re really saying that they’ll be buying $3 million worth of media, of which SCP will get 15%. (Vastly oversimplified.) That has to pay for everything, of course, but it also means that Harry is responsible for the cash flow of the agency. Burger Chef’s 3000 locations means hundreds of local media buys, an impossibly complex process without some computer assistance. Extrapolate that by every other account. (I can’t imagine Harry does it by himself either, though we never see his staff.)
Mad Men has mostly ignored the real and changing world of advertising the past few seasons. This isn’t 1960 any more. The advertising world has almost entirely exploded and upended while they weren’t paying attention. This is the first realistic moment in a very long time.
Hmm… Interesting. I wouldn’t have thought that was a natural application for the 360, but I guess given what you’ve said it makes sense.