For lovers of Mad Men here is the inspiration.

This book is a memoir by one of the Mad Men gods. An unedited piece of 1970 history – language and all. I am not sure how much is fact and how much embellishment – Femina takes us through the tale and it seems not to matter.

What I found fascinating in Femina’s tales is how little has changed in our Industry. The biggest Mad Men and their ad agencies are still here – Ogilvy, WPP for example – and while technology and terms have changed the day-to-day business of advertising and selling has not. The tales of politics, pitches and how to swing those big deals are all unchanged. Creative departments are still things to be kept behind bars as “a bunch of crazies”, account handlers still stressed to the max. Not even the locations have changed – New York being where its at for ad men, mad or not.

So when I was part of a bleeding edge web agency in the 90’s, visiting very large ad agencies most weeks, little did I know that this had been going on for decades. Even the newer, cooler, agencies become the old guard, merge and then threatened by newer agencies that seem to be new models but in actual fact are not. It shall of course continue for a long time yet, which is ever so slightly depressing.

What made this reviewer laugh out loud were the tales of pitches. We have all had bad pitches where everything goes wrong – the ones where it is clear before you even open your mouth you are not going to win, nor even make a dent. The pitch where Femina’s colleague knocks his prospective client to the floor with the projector, and the one where the hotel salesmen are about to knock the hell out of them are wonderful tales to behold. Plus they make me feel better.

This is often a difficult book to read – Femina’s language is straight out of the advertising world of New York in its heyday. So people are “This guy”, “This cat” and the whole gamut of cool cats sometimes grates. The book is well presented with a new prologue and in a roundabout way serves as a bible for the Mad Men series, Martini Cocktail and all. Highly recommended for anyone in any media related occupation – or for anyone who has ever been to a meeting at an ad agency.

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