DON DRAPER
Advertising is based on one thing:
Happiness.
And you know what happiness is?
Happiness is the smell of a new car.
It’s freedom from fear.
It’s a billboard on the side of the road that screams with reassurance that whatever you’re doing is okay.
(Almost to himself)
You are okay.
Mad Men: Season 1, Episode 1 (2007)
Don’s right.
At least, he is about the first part. Maslow, for one, might want to challenge on what happiness “is”. (It partly depends on how much you like cars and how they smell.) But Happiness, as a central, emphatic pursuit; Happiness as an undeniable, unfaltering, ultimate human goal, I’m very down with that.
L to r: Don Draper, Smiley, Matthew Weiner, writer of Mad Men
For all of us, Happiness is Our One Ultimate End. Boil it right the way down, reduce all those different motivational drivers, and sitting right there at the centre of our very human hearts, is our yearning to be happy. Happiness is sitting there, knowingly smiling back at us, the reason behind all the things we do.
I believe this.
Flip it round 180. I won’t stretch it so far as to say that The Human Condition is driven by cowardice... but our deliberate avoidance of discomfort features pretty large and centre stage.
The human condition is smart enough to know that feeling miserable (slightly or acutely) is no fun condition to be in. It’s undesirable because it’s simply so very unpleasant. And no one likes unpleasant.
In the presence of The Unpleasant, we physically react. We fight, we flight, we respond instinctively, viscerally, we catch-up mentally, and then it’s a serious mental strain to stop ourselves from turning and running if things look ugly or threaten to turn nasty.
Flip it back again, back to the positive.
Innately, we pursue happiness. It is the perfect, desirable state of being. For all of us. Masochism? No contradiction here. Masochists enjoy misery. A little pain makes them happy. No need to baffle at the surface contradiction. Just roll with the root motivation.
Context & Circumstance, of course, set the scene. Maslow, 68 years on, remains on the pulse.
“Happy” is Food & Shelter if you’re Hungry & Cold. Happiness is Benevolence & Giving if you personally have So Much. Billionaire Philanthropists are philanthropic for a reason. It’s once you have everything a Hollywood Movie Star has that you typically find yourself wanting an audience with the Dalai Lama.
Existential Angst only tends to follow once your tummy doesn’t grumble and you potentially have a star on Hollywood Boulevard.
So if Happiness is what it’s all about, the Big Question is a rather specific and obvious one. “How do I get there? What’s my line of pursuit? How do I get close, lock it down?”
Because happiness can be pretty slippery, damnably elusive, would be quite the dodge-ball opponent. As Don Draper appreciates so very well, this is where “Advertising” comes in, to “Show the Way” - because advertising silver-platters the oh-so-many routes, sign-posts by easy means of pretty picture and seductive word. Advertising is based on happiness - and the one thing therefore that every powerful piece of advertising must imply?
Hope.
I once pitched a big insurance company that had recently renamed and needed to build some emotional value and high-recall into their brand.
Our big idea was beautifully simple.
“Own Sunrise”.
Associate with sunrise, make the brand, in name, whenever heard or seen, utterly synonymous with sunrise. What better visual device? Pure hope. A new day. Renewal and possibility.
Re-frame insurance “in the positive”. Insurance: not a hedge against a worst-case scenario... but “personal future-proofing”, affording peace-of-mind For Today, meaning you’re covered, smart, have done the right thing, are providing for you and your loved ones. “Having insurance” should mean one less thing to worry about, should make you feel happier and free you up to worry less and pursue More Happiness.
They loved it.
We loved it.
We didn’t get the business.
It’s still the best pitch I didn’t win.
Brands need to be “Happy Hits” of short-lived Feel Good. A Molton & Brown soap dispenser on your bathroom sink; an iPod in your pocket; the feel of a Mont Blanc pen when I first wrote this sentence on a scruff of paper this morning. Brands are made to make us feel better, to help give us what we want.
For many, Happiness Defined might be as clear-cut as wanting to be a rock star?
I'll need a credit card
that's got no limit
And a big black jet
with a bedroom in it
'Cause we all just wanna be
big rockstars
And live in hilltop houses
driving fifteen cars
Nickelback, "Rock Star" lyrics
For others, maybe happiness is a simple concept but an opaque target, where owning a new car... or 15... and enjoying their smell just won’t quite cut it.
2 mins 36: “It’s good to be happy...”
It’s fundamentally because happiness is a whole lot easier said than done that we have advertising.
Because Advertising is hope. The largely unsubstantiated hope that everything really will be ok. That before things turn bad, there can be a heap of good stuff. That happiness isn’t about chasing the horizon, but running toward a fixed point. That we are Born to Live, and the objective of any lifetime is to cram it with as much happiness as can be found.
Advertising is the offer of hope, that happiness, however temporal and potentially fleeting, is at least touch-able and wholly real. You just have to believe and buy.
SP.
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