Newsweek Gets Mad Men Fever

For over a year and a half, fans of the AMC series Mad Men have been anxiously awaiting the return of Don Draper and the team at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. 

To celebrate the return of the award winning series this Sunday, Newsweek has given their current issue -- on newsstands today -- a Mad Men makeover.


The issue, whose cover proclaims 'Welcome Back to 1965" (the year of season 5 in Mad Men), holds a host of '60s inspired articles. Christopher Buckley tells us the history of the martini. While George Lois, an original Mad Men himself, lets us in on "the art of the sell."

But it's not only just the articles that have a retro spin in this issue. All of the advertisers -- which include AllState, Mercedes-Benz, and British Airways, among others -- also provided retro ads for the issue. 

While most advertisers commissioned their agencies to create fun retro designed ads, some brands, like Johnnie Walker and the U.S. Forest Service, used the opportunity to re-run some of their original 1960s creative. 


In her letter from the editor, Tina Brown explained the impetus for this move:

We invited the Hill Holliday ad agency in Boston to collaborate on our cover shoot, and its creative director, Lance Jensen, had a brain wave: wouldn’t it be eye-catching for our pages to reflect not just the editorial look of the ’60s but also the advertising idiom of the time? The concept caught fire, and soon creative directors from agencies all over were diving into their vaults to dust off visuals from old accounts like Spam, Tide, Dunkin Donuts, and Hush Puppies. Ad agencies like Brand Cottage, not around in those days, went retro just for kicks. 

These are three of my favorite ads from the bunch (the use of Mayhem in the All State ad is genius!). The rest you can find in a slideshow at the top right of the page.