Ethics and Creativity in Madmen

I teach Introduction to Management at Brooklyn College.  The distance learning software we use nowadays is called "Blackboard" (NYU, Troy State and Brooklyn College have all used it since about 10 years ago).  I just posted a discussion assignment on the course's Blackboard site for this fall's class. One of the subjects in the course is "creativity" and the question I'm raising is whether there are ethical limits to creativity.  I use AMC's TV series Madmen to raise two discussion questions. The links to the Madmen and television advertisement clips are below.

The questions I raise are as follows.

After reading chapter two and after the class discussion on creativity go to blackboard's "external links" folder "Creativity and Ethics in Madmen" (see links below). Watch the five Youtube clips in the folder. The first two are of 1950s Lucky Strike TV commercials. The third is of a 1960s Eastman Kodak camera commercial. The fourth and fifth are from the TV series Madmen. They depict the fictitious creative genius behind the fictitious Sterling Cooper advertising firm, Don Draper (note the allusion to drapes, draping, hiding, the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain). The fourth clip is of Draper creating the Lucky Strike advertising strategy. The fifth is of Draper creating the ad campaign for Eastman Kodak's carousel (a picture slide display device) which is similar to the Eastman Kodak ad shown.

(1) What are the benefits of advertising?  What arguments can be made to justify the ethical foundations of Don Draper's approach to advertising? 


(2) Are there moral limits to emotional manipulation? For example, is a government which uses patriotism to motivate loyalty despite policies which are harmful to the public ethical? Likewise, is a firm which uses love, happiness, freedom and similar virtues to motivate sales of products ethical? If so, what are the limits? If not, is it realistic to expect managers to adhere to strict ethical standards? 

(3) Elaborate on the question of whether Don Draper is ethical in using higher order emotions, happiness and familial love to sell cigarettes that he knows kill and photography supplies given the gains from advertising.
External Links

Lucky Strike ad 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeUAhuSzSDs


Luck Strike ad 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWj_tR64Ti4

1960s Kodak ad, “Turn around”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBWVWjdNWC0

Madmen clip: Lucky Strike: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5rQF7Ofc5w

Comment: AMC's excellent Madmen series is supposed to be about the advertising business in the early 1960s, but as you can see from the above the "It's Toasted" concept was already established in the 1950s and earlier (1917 according to Wikipedia). Also, American Tobacco, founded by James Buchanan Duke (cf: Duke University), owned the Lucky Strike brand and it was not a family run operation by the 1960s (the US Supreme Court broke up American Tobacco, the Tobacco Trust, in 1911). Famed heiress Doris Duke who died in 1993 was Duke's only child.

Nevertheless, this scene gives a cool illustration of a creative process. In the episode, the hero, the brilliant and creative Don Draper (Jon Hamm), is asked to think of an ad campaign for Lucky Strike cigarettes to address the recent findings that cigarettes cause cancer. He thinks about it for weeks but cannot come up with an idea. At the beginning of the meeting with the tobacco executives, he still draws a blank. After consulting a psychologist, he is still speechless. His account exec, Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser) quotes the psychologist to fill the gap (Campbell is sneaky and the implication is that he stole the research from Draper's trash can).

Just as the tobacco executives are walking out, Draper's light bulb lights: the cancer finding is a strategic opportunity to appeal to higher order needs like happiness. Lucky Strike is "toasted."

Madmen clip: Kodak carousel http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suRDUFpsHus

The Eastman Kodak executives are interviewing ad firms to handle their new product, which they call "the wheel." You put slides in the wheel and then click to turn the wheel to the next slide. They have told Don Draper and his boss, Herman "Duck" Phillips (Mark Moses), media director Harry Crane (Rich Sommer), and art director Salvatore Romano (Bryan Batt) that their firm, Sterling Cooper, is one of four or five they are interviewing.

Draper uses his own wedding pictures, pictures of his wife Betty (January Jones), his children and himself to show that the product should be named the "carousel", not the wheel, because it is reminiscent of childhood and evokes the nostalgia of bringing up children that the "carousel" can capture--the deep feelings the consumer has for his or her own children, the nostalgia for the past and perhaps their own childhoods. "It takes us where we ache to go again. It lets us travel like child. The carousel."

Harry Crane leaves the room as he breaks into tears. The Kodak executives are speechless. Phillips confidently looks at the Eastman Kodak executives and says "Good luck at your next meeting."