Mad Men

In the series Mad Men the main topic is advertising, in the first chapter of season 1, a tobacco company resorts to this advertising company to ask for help since they have to hide the health damaging aspects of cigarettes from people as some investigations had been done and people were suspecting.

Our task in the thinking skills class was after watching the chapter find this information:

1. Identify some of the vested interests in this scene. How do these work?

2. Why is Peter's idea rejected, and why is Don's idea accepted?

  1. In this scene we can see the vested interest in what the tobacco company owners say since they want to show that their product does not lead to fatal ilness, they want to show the interesting side. Although they know that it is not healthy thery want their advertising to show other aspects, because otherwise people would stop buying Lucky Strike. That´s their vested interest, they hide the truth because if they do not do so they wuold loose clients and lots of money.

2. Peter's idea was rejected because he suggested to tell people that yes, cigarettes are bad for their health but there are worse things and they may die from something else so why not die from smoking. He said that people want to die so it is a good idea to tell them that the product that they are consuming will kill them. On the other hand, Don's idea was accepted because he meant to show people other aspects of that tobacco company,  that were meaningless but a good way to distract people from the negative ones, that's why he suggested to tell people that  tobacco was toasted, although it did not make the cigarettes more healthy, it just hid the fact that they were damaging.