Gatsby, Cannes & Draper

By Gawen Rudder

There comes a time when it becomes difficult to distinguish between advertising and real life. As Daisy told the besotted Jay Gatsby in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s sad and short novel, “You resemble the advertisement of the man …”

That time was the roaring twenties, the jazz age and the golden age of advertising. In that shiny new fast-living world, business boomed, feeding on the excesses of an emerging consumer culture. Life in our industry was good. Champagne flowed. Creatively, long-established J. Walter Thompson and BBDO’s DM doyen John Caples put their stamp on American commerce. Claude Hopkins and Albert Lasker of Lord & Thomas (later FCB) made their name. Brands like Ford, Maxwell House, Kotex and Palmolive blossomed and became household names. Never again shall we see such an uncritical consumer, an economy so robust, or a government so approving. It was a buoyant buyer’s market and would remain so until boom became bust with the Great Depression.

The industry resurfaced and boomed again via the likes of the real life Draper Daniels, the Leo Burnett creative head upon whom the fictitious Don Draper was fashioned. (Daniels repositioned Marlboro the then lipstick red filter-tip ladies brand, targeted men and bequeathed the Marlboro Man to the world.)

Three decades separate Gatsby and Draper, but the similarities are spooky. Fitzgerald’s great American novel was conceived at his St Raphael villa, a 40-minute drive from Cannes where the beautiful people gathered in the rain for the May premiere of ‘The Great Gatsby.’ It was the fourth attempt to capture the Great American Dream on film, this time in extravagant 3D. A month later, yet more beautiful people will descend upon the Cannes to witness the release of the sixtieth Lions. Self-congratulatory air kisses and high fives abound. Or, as Fitzgerald described it, “the bar is in full swing and floating rounds of cocktails permeate until the air is alive with chatter and laughter and casual innuendo, and introductions forgotten on the spot, and enthusiastic meetings between women who never know each other’s names.” (OMG! Who writes like that anymore?)

Both Gatsby and Draper were creatures of extravagant self-invention. Jay was born Jimmy Gatz, his parents were “shiftless and unsuccessful farm people.” As a young Minnesota major decorated with dubious medals from the Great War, he was despatched to Oxford University for a couple of months and presented himself as an ‘Oxford College Man.’ As the ‘Mad Men’ TV series unfolded, it was revealed that ‘Don Draper’ was born to a 22-year-old Illinois prostitute as Dick Whitman. In his early twenties the orphaned Whitman assumed the identity of his Lieutenant, one Donald F. Draper, who died in action. He switched tags and in doing so, scored a Purple Heart.

Compare their suits. Baz ensured Leonardo was clad in authentic twenties Brooks Brothers suits. At the height of the numerous ‘Mad Men’ parties three or four years ago, Brooks released their 2-button narrow-lapelled grey sharkskin sixties suits and narrow ties. Today it’s the Gatsby theme parties that have the party-hire companies stocking up on pink seersucker jackets and cream flannels.

Compare their cars. Daisy dented Jay’s chrome yellow Rolls Royce Phantom convertible, “bright with nickel, and swollen in its monstrous length, sitting down behind many layers of glass in a sort of green leather conservatory…”  Whilst Don, after pranging his 1961 Dodge Polara company car, graduated to an equally elongated ice blue and white aero-finned 1962 classic Cadillac Coupe de Ville.

Sterling Cooper told Don the agency should be, “the kind where everyone has a summer home.” Jay purchased his “huge incoherent failure of a house” on Long Island for the long hot summer of 1923.

‘The Great Gatsby’ concludes, as so often it does at Cannes, in the water. Except Gatsby’s damp demise revealed “a thin red circle …” Jay died age 32, and although Don is past 40, the whiskey is not aging him well. As ‘Mad Men’ moves towards its seventh and final series next year, there is speculation he too will die before the ratings tumble off that iconic opening credits skyscraper. 

Gawen Rudder is Manager, Business Services & Advice at The Communications Council