Wednesday May 06, 2009
The Madmen did well
John Pilger
New Statesman
The first 100 days of Barack Obama’s presidency have shown him to be a marketing exec’s dream, a Marlboro Man for the Noughties – and little else.
The BBC’s American soap Mad Men offers a rare glimpse of the power of corporate advertising. The promotion of smoking half a century ago by the “smart” people of Madison Avenue, who knew the truth, led to countless deaths.
Advertising and its twin, public relations, became a way of deceiving dreamt up by those who had read Freud and applied mass psychology to anything from cigarettes to politics. Just as Marlboro Man was virility itself, so politicians could be branded, packaged and sold.
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