Copyright law gives exclusive rights to the creator of a creative and original work of expression that is fixed in a perceivable medium. So, no, there is no copyright protection for a brand or a product.
Trademark law gives exclusive rights to a company that uses a name image or other distinctive identifier of the origin of goods or services. However, “Mad Men” is not using any of those brand names, trademarks, names, logos, etc., in commerce as source identifiers, so there’s nothing in that direction.
The only kind of action that comes to mind off the top of my head is some kind of defamation claim. They would have to argue that “Mad Men” is making false statements that members of the public are likely to accept as statements of fact.
As I recall, Jaguar knew that they would be involved in the show and signed off on it (maybe?) but they weren’t very thrilled with how that storyline shook out for obvious reasons.
ETA:
Ok,here’s an article about it. I guess they didn’t know the details of the plot but the MM people did contact them for research:
Looking at how McCann runs things, it’s obvious that McCann had lost it’s edge. Hobart was pointedly not really interested in the accounts that SC&P could bring, they’re dwarfed in size by the accounts McCann is chasing after.
What he wanted was for the SC&P people to infuse some life into McCann’s creative. However, they’re doing the classic big company mistake of overpaying for something unique and then systematically stomping everything unique out of it.
The scene with the roast beef was especially telling and clever, I thought. When Meredith asked him if roast beef was ok, Don Draper was expecting massive slices of prime rib being carved tableside while he wined and dined Miller in the “executive dining room”. Instead, he got sad little sandwiches while some guy from research wasted everyone’s time. It was obvious from that one scene what went wrong with McCann and obvious that no amount of Don Draper could ever fix it.
Did anyone think that McCann as a whole needed to be fixed? They are still one of the most successful ad agencies in history with s mountain of award-winning campaigns.
Exactly the same thing happened at the little 5,000-watt radio station I used to work at. After operating for two or three years, it was acquired by an international mega-media company that shall remain nameless. In came the MBA whiteshirts from New York with their laptops, and a year later all of the creative original staff were gone. The station went from being truly different and special to something completely run-of-the-mill cookie-cutter bland and boring.
If you’ve never been trapped in such a situation, it is extremely depressing and gut-wrenching! :mad:
I agree with the arlier posters who noted the Chevy-Buick connection. McCann got Chevrolet in addition to removing (who we infer is) their biggest competitor for ALL the GM business. And thanks to the no-compete clauses, no one can mount a challenge for at least five years. Throw in a few other moneymakers like Sunkist and Ocean Spray, and McCann got its money’s worth, even if Don Draper should happen to be murdered by some random hitchhiker he picks up.
I thought Chevy dropped SC&P. Then they hired Bob Benson (Bob Benson is my vote for the absolute stupidest storyline in the show’s run, btw) and SC&P no longer has/had a Detroit presence.
Madison Avenue was (is?) a small world and Don’s drinking habits are well known even if all the details aren’t. When Don walked out of the meeting & disappeared without telling anyone Jim immediately assumed “bender”. Even Meredith (who’s really gotten a lot more competent since being assigned Don) is probably wonder about it (in a “this again” sense).
Pretty much. Don was the star attraction; Ted & Roger were secondary, and the actual clients after them. Jim thinks Don would be a great asset for McCann, but deluded himself about how much he could control him.
Well we saw how well her marriage to become a successful doctor’s wife worked out.
Good point; it’s some consultation for Joan that Jim doesn’t have a clue about Jaguar, or else he most certainly would’ve thrown that in her face.
A boyfriend might’ve put him off because he doesn’t want the hassle of encroaching another male’s “territory”.
Tom & Lorenzo nicely summarize the contrasts between Joan & Peggy in this week’s blog post. Peggy’s been doing the job she’s in a lot longer, and is a lot better at it than Joan is at accounts. Peggy has a reputation that Joan doesn’t and Peggy is a lot more useful to McCann than Joan would be. Plus Peggy’s going into McCann without any illusions of staying for the long all; 3 years max and she’s done (likely to a Creative Director at small firm, if she doesn’t finally meet up with the right people to start her own).
I agree with the others who say that he bought it to reduce competition and couldn’t care less about the people. McCann-Erickson is just about to introduce the Miller Lite tastes great/less filling campaign, one of the greatest in advertising history. How could they be said to have lost their edge?
I agree that the scene showed Don that everything he thought about how he would be treated there was wrong. (And I thought executive dining room, too. We were all played by Weiner/Hobart.) But the guy from research wasn’t wasting anyone’s time. He was giving a brilliant report to his people about the customer they were aiming for. It was the single best presentation in the history of the show. In the early years, when they still showed SC people creating, people used to complain loudly about how bad what they showed would have been in the real world. This wasn’t. This was real world. Maybe it comes across as boring and un-Draperish, but that’s the point. And we forget today how many of the campaigns got turned down by their clients. This will be classic because it’s being done right.
They did. It was a trial, which SC&P passed, enough so that Hobart got worried about McCann’s Buick business – which is why he sidled up to Roger in the steam room. Roger didn’t understand why Hobart was nervous until Joan explained what she’d learned from Bob. Which Roger then used as leverage to get Hobart’s 51% buyout offer.
Since we haven’t heard anything more of this, I’d assume that McCann pointed out that with SC&P now part of McCann, Buick had no reason to move the business to their new subsidiary, so McCann kept the account. Which is what Hobart wanted all along.
Heh. You know, it’s still possible that you’re 100% wrong, there.
Just picture it: the boring and un-Draperish company men who ate their pathetic little sandwiches while nodding along with The Guy From Research spend the next episode crafting a campaign built around pitching someone who, y’know, drinks what his father drank, and there are images of, like, tools in a garage, and so on.
And then Don strolls in, wearing his grey suit like 007 and holding a toasted-tobacco cigarette – telling everyone he recently bedded a waitress, and thoroughly enjoyed the experience, but soon realized the feeling was fleeting and set to looking for something more – same way I crave a beer that tastes great, and is less filling.
I thought that part of the problem was that the research guy was telling the kind of story that Don was in the habit of constructing himself through the creative process.
At McCann, the creative directors have that taken out of their hands and instead compete with each other to fulfill the research guy’s vision.
Except that Don would never sit at the table and give such a canned presentation of boring factoids. I’d’ve been staring out the window after the first fifteeen seconds too.
I thought that was a great episode. I loved every part of it. I didn’t enjoy the Joan getting harassed parts, but they were accurate and heartbreaking and well done. It was so upsetting when Joan thought she got an ally, but he seemed like he would be even worse. And I wanted her to kick all sorts of ass, but I understand she took the best option for her.
I loved Peggy and Roger’s scene. It seemed to inject new life into both of them. I’m sure Peggy will face issues at McCann, but it looks like she’ll be able to handle it.
Yeah, I don’t know what exactly her position will be. Possibly she’ll be like the other copywriter women we saw at the beginning of the episode talking to Joan. But she’s proved herself before, and I think she knows she can prove herself again, even though that’s not how she wants it to go.
It’s not that she’s so alluring. If any of the other men on the show had met her, they wouldn’t be super interested. It’s that for a certain type of damaged man, she’s perfect.
Each episode in this (half) season has ended with Don losing a bit more of his Don Draper life. In the first episode, it ended with him wanting to see Di at the diner and her not being there, and him being all alone. The second episode ended with him losing pretty much all the stuff from his apartment. The third episode ended up with his apartment selling and him out in the hallway. The fourth ended up with him losing his independence with SC&P and being swallowed up by McCann. Also with him losing some more of his mojo, since he tried to give a speech about this not being an end, but a new beginning, and none of the employees listening. I don’t know if Don let go of his job this episode, but it doesn’t look like he’ll be staying long. I would think he’ll have to go back to the office at least one more time, because there needs to be a goodbye with him and Peggy at the very least.
At first I thought that maybe he’ll get some sort of traveling salesman job, but I don’t know if that’s exactly what he’d want. Or how common those jobs are in 1970. It seems the most thematically appropriate would be for him to buy a little farm and to somewhat become Dick Whitman again.
I looked up what she made for the sale; in the episode Waterloo, Roger said that Joan made “a little over one and a half million.” So even if she’s not getting the full half million still owed to her, she’s received $1.25 million from the sale to McCann. She is set for life.
It’ll be interesting to see what she does next, I hope they address it, even if it’s just with a few passing comments. I don’t think she can work in advertising anymore, but her general skills could let her go to any number of businesses. She’s worked at a department store before, maybe she could be some sort of executive at Macy’s or something.
That whole scene was great. The McCann guys said earlier that it was a shirtsleeve operation, that he’s supposed to relax, but all of the guys in there without their jackets just look like drones. And Don hearing that they said to Ted the exact same thing they said to him.
It’s true that the Miller Lite campaign will be hugely successful. But that presentation sounded terrible to me. The presentation starts out by saying he’s going to talk about a specific man, but then starts saying he lives in Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin. Doesn’t sound like a very specific man to me. Then he says other vague things about what he likes or does. And one camera shot shows other guys at the meeting with their pens ready to write and take notes, but none of them are, because there’s nothing to take notes about. I’ve been in a lot of meetings like that, where someone is droning on and saying nothing, but I don’t always have a window to stare out of and watch a plane fly overhead.
