MADMENhattan

What was your first reaction to “Mad Men”?
“Quite honestly, I was very surprised by how accurate it was in terms of the costumes and the sets and the props, and how everybody looks exactly how we looked. It was “déja vu all over again,” in that sense. But I was almost equally shocked by the fact that it didn’t feel like Ogilvy & Mather felt to me in 1964 when I joined. The people in “Mad Men” don’t seem to like each other very much, [whereas] we were a band of brothers — as most agencies were. In most agencies, there was a certain amount of jockeying for positions, but people really liked each other, and everybody worked very hard to make the agency win. But “Mad Men” is a drama. And so they need to have tension, of course.”

Jane Maas is best known for heading up the iconic “I Love New York” campaign, which rescued New York City from bankruptcy and still continues to echo around the world. “This great advertising has many fathers,” she says. “But I am its only mother.”

–Jane Maas (billed as a “real-life Peggy Olson”) talks about her new book “Mad Women” at Salon