Mad Men of Manchester

Did I ever tell you about the time I invented Mad Men? No?

OK, so it wasn't actually about an agency in New York. It wasn't set in the 50s or 60s either I admit. And it wasn't a TV show I suppose but, go on, indulge me.

I'm harking back to the late 90s for this tale, when one of my favourite clients was a regional radio network. In an effort to get closer to the ad agencies that were so important to its revenue streams, we were working with the now sadly missed Marketeer magazine on various projects.

One of the campaigns we came up with involved creating a Just 17/Blue Jeans-style comic photo strip set in the north west advertising community.

The stars of the series were the agencies themselves. We railroaded bosses and staff at various ad agencies across the region into appearing in one episode each. The scripts focused on and poked fun at common scenarios found in agency life and were dreamt up by a ramshackle team of PR agency kids, ad folk and friends of the client.

I distinctly recall one great night in The Reform, drinking absinthe and coming up with ridiculous storylines with Marketeer editor Tony Murray, my old boss Paul Carroll, top creative director Pete Johnston and Alistair Sim, then of Tucker Clarke Williams.

I also remember Tony writing an inspired one-off Christmas double page special, blasphemously re-enacting The Nativity, with Manchester agency bosses masquerading as Mary, Joseph and even the Baby Jesus.

It was brilliant and only got pulled at the last minute when we found out that the radio group's biggest advertisers were strict Churchgoers, who may not have found it funny at all.

Anyway, I digress. 'Stripped Naked' (which it was called) was great fun and the series proved really popular with Marketeer readers too. They loved it because, even though it poked fun at them, the local advertising community saw themselves in each of the scenarios.

Everyone had blagged their way through an interview. Some had suffered tricky relationships with clients. All had seen unreasonable ones, at least. They had also all endured egomaniac bosses, hurried pitches, drunken staff parties, precious creatives, agency mergers, great campaigns and silly ideas.

Stripped Naked had the lot and that's why it was so good.

I think that's the appeal of Mad Men too, at least among marketing folk. Even though it's set several decades ago in the States, the agency scenarios that feature in each episode are spot on and could only be written by someone who knows what it's like to work in an agency. Peggy, Pete, Burt, Roger, Joan and the rest still exist in agencies up and down the country today.

The only one who doesn't seem real to me is Don. During the first and second series, he was the star. He always had the best ideas, usually got his own way, never made mistakes and was loved by everyone else.

Sure, he had an eye for the ladies, but that was the exception, rather than the rule.

For the current series though, the producers seem to have reinvented him as a sex maniac who makes Tiger Woods seem like a shy boy.

The scripts have focused less and less on agency life and more and more on Don's unlikely liaisons - erm, what's he doing with that Plain Jane schoolteacher? Bizarre.

With his wife Betty also pining for the local politician who made a play for her, the show looks more like it's set on Wisteria Lane these days, not Madison Avenue.