Week 4 EOC - Mad Men

    The series, Mad Men is set in 1960s New York. Mad Men is a sexy, stylized and provocative AMC drama that follows the lives of the ruthlessly competitive men and women of a Madison Avenue advertising, an ego-driven world where key players make an art of the sell. The series revolves around the conflicted world of Don Draper (Hamm), the biggest ad man (and ladies man) in the business, and his colleagues at the Sterling Cooper Advertising Agency. The series also depicts authentically the roles of men and women in this era while exploring the true human nature beneath the guise of 1960s traditional family values. (http://www.amctv.com/originals/madmen/about/)
    In this episode of Mad Men, Draper is trying to come up with an idea on how to market Lucky Strikes    Cigarettes. Studies had just been recently released on cigarettes being linked to lung cancer and because of an article in Readers Digest, society started viewing cigarettes as evil which effected the sales of cigarettes. Draper had to counteract this view and became involved in a marketing research process.
    Draper hired a doctor to collect and analyze secondary data. Seated in a bar one evening, Draper starts a conversation, collecting primary data, with an older man asking him open-ended questions about his cigarette smoking. This was a survey research approach, in which he interacts with a person to obtain facts, opinions, and attitudes of people who smoked. As he continued sitting in the bar he used ethnographic research the study of human behavior in its natural context, involving observation of behavior and physical setting. He also spoke with his mistress asking her questions and sharing ideas.
    Draper used SWOT analysis, trying to identify internal strengths and weaknesses and examining external opportunities and threats as he questioned the owner of the cigarette company. After finding how the cigarettes were processed and made, Draper decided to use a societal marketing orientation that states that an organization exists not only to satisfy customer wants and needs and to meet organizational objectives but also to preserve or enhance individuals' and society's long-term best interests. His idea was that the cigarette company was making a product that was toasted so the cigarettes were not toxic like the cigarettes that the competitors were trying to sell. Draper used this fact as a competitive advantage.