Like most peo­ple, I am very excited that Mad Men is well into its third sea­son. I got the first sea­son for Christmas and have been hooked ever since. Aside from the gor­geous styling and art direc­tion, the excel­lent act­ing and the great look­ing cast, by most counts, it’s a pretty real­is­tic glimpse into a cre­ative agency in 1960s New York City. The lay­ered story lines man­age to look deeply into the char­ac­ters’ lives and their envi­ron­ments. Much of the hype is over the clothes or the extremely detailed styling. I myself find it inter­est­ing that, unlike a lot of shows set in the work­place, they actu­ally do talk about the work and its challenges.

This slideshow from FastCompany​.com out­lined a bunch of real life cam­paigns that were dis­cussed on Mad Men in pre­vi­ous episodes. Many of these brands served as the back­bone for arcs within the show (either using the real prod­uct or a sim­i­lar stand in). The Mad Men writ­ers have taken lib­er­ties with the actual cam­paigns — some are very sim­i­lar to their real life coun­ter­parts (a lip­stick brand, Lucky Strike cig­a­rettes), while oth­ers take new, dif­fer­ent approaches (Utz, Playtex).

vs.

It’s impres­sive that the writ­ers not only craft the plots for the shows but also have mini-branding projects as part of the process. Everything is painstak­ingly researched and it’s begin­ning to get even more inter­est­ing as the polit­i­cal and social envi­ron­ment of the 1960s shifts as the story continues.