Publisher's Note: Lessons Learned from 'Mad Men' I Have Known

Helmut brought Bauhaus principles ("less is more") to advertising art direction. Don Draper's use of an elephant in a Samsonite commercial in Season 4 recalls the gorilla in the iconic 1970 American Tourister commercial created by the legendary team of Roy Grace and Marcia Bell.

I knew Roy, who hired me at DDB, and Helmut. Of course, they were decades older than me, but that didn't matter. It was the idea that mattered, the concept. If you had the germ of an idea, they respected you and listened to you. In fact, Helmut hardly talked at all.

The ad itself was an expression of an idea. Yes, it was laid out tastefully, and the words crafted efficiently, but when everyone else was saying "Buy cars with tail fins," these guys were going the other way and saying "Think Small." Instead of bombastic chest-thumping, they said, "We're No. 2. We Try Harder."

George Lois, Jerry Della Femina, Phyllis Robinson, Bob Gage, Jack Dillon, Mary Wells, Dave Reider and others from that era went in the opposite direction when it made sense to do so. But it had to make sense to be contrarian. They didn't just do it for the sake of being different. Bill Bernbach said if you're going to feature a man upside down in an ad to get attention, you'd better be selling zipper pockets.

"Does it pop?" is a question we'd always ask ourselves when doing an ad or storyboard. The same holds true online where there is just too much "blahvertising." Does your offer or ad stand out? And does it stand out for the right reasons? Or does it suffer from what Jakob Nielsen calls "banner blindness?"

The legends from Don Draper's day would have had a blast with the Internet. What fun they would have had breaking the rules all over again and doing the unexpected. The closest campaign of recent vintage I can think of is the Old Spice campaign that ran in 2010. It was so whimsical that even Sesame Street's Cookie Monster parodied it.

Bill Bernbach and those that followed had fun with the medium. They played with it, and the audience went along for the ride. We need that kind of marketing savvy online. LC

PS: Many thanks to living legend Dick Rich and my art director at DDB, Neil Raphan, for their timely, historical clarifications. Neil is still in the business as an SVP at Saatchi & Saatchi.

Oh, and one more thing. In my view, Don Draper's best quote is "They don't run credits at the end of commercials." Because of that brutal fact, many people in the business take credit for big ideas that they were only peripherally involved in.

When I was calling around to the people I knew to get the facts straight for this issue, everyone, without exception, said Roy Grace never did so. In fact, he was very understated about his incredible accomplishments. Geniuses like the late great Roy Grace don't have to overstate anything.