30 August 2025
Clicks and charts don’t move hearts: The future of advertising looks a lot like its past: simple, emotional, unforgettable. Don Draper knew it back in the sixties - people don’t buy LOGIC, they buy a FEELING.
The AMC television series Mad Men is a drama about a fictional advertising agency set in New York in the sixties, famously located on Madison Avenue.
The “Mad” reference came from the street name, but it was also apt for the behavior of the ad-agency people of the day.
The series is beautifully written, cast, directed, and faithfully styled with costumes, cars, architecture and social code from the stylish sixties. People smoke continuously and have their first alcoholic drink for the day when they walk into the office.
The central character is agency creative director Don Draper: impeccably dressed, confident, flawed, but with one gift that made him an outstanding adman: a deep instinct for the human condition. Draper knew how to sell a feeling.
The show offers a rare window into the creative process.
Selling a slide projector - what could be more prosaic?
One scene has become iconic: Draper pitching to Kodak for the launch of their new slide projector.
Kodak's product development team want to focus on the key innovation: loading slides into a circular tray - they called it "the wheel".
Don proposes instead calling it a "carousel". Using family photos projected through Kodak's prototype, he frames the projector as a time machine for revisiting fond memories. The obvious approach would be to talk-up the technology - Don takes a more powerful path.
This scene has become iconic: Mad Man - Don Draper pitches to Kodak to handle the launch of a new product. The Kodak Carousel slide projector.
The series illustrates what advertising used to be about; copy writing and imagery that appealed to people’s HEARTS rather than their HEADS.
Fast-forward to today.
In the rush to reach “people in market now,” digital platforms have become delivery engines: pumping ads into feeds with not enough regard for emotional craft.
Most digital ads are more assault than seduction. They blur together in a river of sameness, and AI threatens to make it a flood.
Why? Because clients seek low-cost solutions, agencies scale for quantity, and digital platforms promise everything in neat dashboards. Metrics: clicks, conversions, traffic - are easy to produce and easy to defend.
A rising graph looks impressive in a report, even if the creative was forgettable.
The spotlight has shifted from what’s inside the envelope (the message, the brand, the hook) to the speed and efficiency of the envelope itself.
Harvesting vs. Planting
Digital advertising is brilliant at harvesting buyers who are already in market.
The playbook is simple: stalk them along the final buying path, jump out from behind a digital-bush, and shout “Hey! What about me?” It works - but only in the last few meters of the race, when every competitor is jostling for the same sale.
The bigger game is planting seeds with people before they’re ready to buy.
Great advertising shapes memory, builds predisposition, and nudges people toward your brand long before they start clicking ads
That’s the hidden power of emotional advertising.
But what about B2B?
Even in B2B, where purchases are technical, high-value, and seemingly rational, decisions are still made by people. Engineers, procurement managers, c-suite executives don’t leave their feelings at the door when they put on a hard hat or a suit.
Trust, confidence, fear of risk, personal reputation; these are all emotional levers. Scoring selection criteria may justify the decision, but the feeling of confidence or belief in a brand is what tips it. In big-ticket B2B purchasing, like delivering infrastructure projects, how well the people in the buying team work with the people in the project delivery consortium is an important factor - there will be many problems to overcome.
Even billion-dollar buying decisions are human decisions.
Show me one billion-dollar project where decision making was completely devoid of politics, bias, or some other form of human intervention. "Feelings" and "emotion" might not capture the full spectrum of human foibles, but in sales and marketing trying to win on features and benefits alone is just naïve.
Digital harvests; creative cultivates. The strongest brands do both.
We’ve spent two decades hypnotized by dashboards and metrics, obsessing over the sprint for the finish line when the race is almost over. But the spotlight is swinging back to connecting on an emotional level using brand values communicated through words and imagery.
Buying decisions are made by real people influenced by feelings rationalized by logic. Nobody ever said "I smoke Marlborough because it makes me feel like a man" instead they would have said they prefer the flavor and the practicality of the crush-proof box (cough).
Marketing needs more instinct for what makes people tick, and how to wind up their emotional springs.
Mad Men are sane again.
