RSSTalking Politics with Tom Messner
Our ad critic goes a second round with Euro RSCG exec Tom Messner, this time discussing politics and the presidential election. Tom was a member of the “Tuesday Team” that crafted Ronald Reagan’s influential reelection campaign ad strategy of 1984. He also worked on the election effort of George H.W. Bush. Tom talks about why negative messaging is so effective in politics — and names the three most important pieces of political advertising since Reagan’s “It’s Morning Again in America.” (Hint: They’re all negative.)
Other topics: McCain’s anti-Obama “celebrity” ad — a win because of the amount of free media it received — and advice for Barack as he heads into the Democratic Convention this month in Denver.
Mad Men
Our resident ad critic Barbara Lippert talks with Tom Messner about the veracity of the latest episode of AMC’s Mad Men.
Messner, currently a partner at Euro RSCG, entered the business in 1968, working at BBDO and then DDB, among others, before founding his own agency, Messner Vetere Berger Carey, in 1986.
The series’ take on the ad biz circa 1960 makes it look like a “buffoon industry,” according to Messner. Even so, Barbara and Tom are both mad for the latest installment. Among the subjects Tom analyzes are “stupid new-business people,” WASPs and the revival of the Catholic mass in Latin. In Sunday night’s episode, secretary-turned copywriter Peggy is shown sitting uncomfortably with a toddler in a Church pew as the priest repeats the “Oh, Lord, I’m not worthy” liturgy.
Tom also tells how DDB actually handled the American Airlines account in 1961, a coup that forced the outsider agency to speak to “establishment America.”
