DennisHoward

Playboy was '50's thru '60's thing. I think I went there once! But no question it had a big impact on changing mores at the time. Use of sex in advertising was more subliminal back then, unless you were reading a trucking or automotive tool magazine. Playboy clearly broke the mold, and things went downhill from there with imitators like Guccione. I interviewed Ralph Ginsburg once, and he was unequivocal about his drive to "destroy the American superego." Quite militant about it.

Probably the music from My Fair Lady. When it comes to music, I'm really dated. What i saw of Mad Men was disappointing, so I didn't follow it regularly. It lacked the variety and color of Madison Avenue in the '60's. Every agency had its own character. I learned that when I shopped 10 different agencies before joining Zakin. Madison Ave was like a big NY neighborhood with 20 different ethnic varieties.

The 1 or 2 martini lunch was pretty routine. Quite a few careers got sideswiped by booze & cigarettes. I've been off both for 44 years. Otherwise, I wouldn't be here. I think we made AA popular and then it hit Hollywood. The creative environment was quite intense and very much a team thing. By the way, there were a lot of bullshit agencies around, too. One client asked me to sit in when he was reviewing agencies, and I couldn't believe some of the crap I saw.

It's a very different world today, so I would hesitate to give any strong advice beyond pursuing your own creative instincts wherever they lead. I really don't think much of most of the commercials I see on TV today, with some exceptions of course. And the internet has made it into a high tech numbers game. Marketing itself has been radically transformed. Products now go straight from China to Walmart, so who needs marketing?

Technology is both a liberator and a destroyer. Back then, it took 15 skilled people to create one ad. Now we can all do it ourselves on a laptop. But the quality has suffered as the costs went down.