More Funk In The Trunk

Abstract

‘It took almost 55 years, but the 1960s are finally over,’ proclaimed Dave Itzkoff in the New York Times. ‘They ended without our even realizing it, somewhere in the middle of this bifurcated final season of Mad Men.’¹ After an eight-year, seven-season ‘trip’ through the 1960s, TV series Mad Men drew to a close in May 2015 with ‘I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke’. This iconic milestone in advertising history, ‘Hilltop’ (1971)—where an international crowd of youths join together in a sing-along in honour of their favourite beverage—is, in Mad Men, implied to be the brainchild of the series’ enigmatic central protagonist Don Draper (Jon Hamm). Inspired by the groovy vibes of a West Coast hippie retreat, Draper, not for the first time, is able to parlay socio-cultural issues of his day into marketing dynamite. Mad Men reaches its crescendo with the spirit of the counterculture transformed into a jingle, a glossy package soaring into the annals of television history.