Where do sharp-dressed, boozing, chain-smoking, womanizing, adulterous executives happily coexist with trademarks?  In the fictional offices of Sterling Cooper in Matthew Weiner’s delicious creation, the television series Mad Men, which just wrapped its third tour de force season on the cable network AMC.  At Sterling Cooper, a team of Madison Avenue advertising men—Mad Men—along with one gifted woman copywriter who defies convention by going “toe-to-toe” with the boys, cooks up campaign after campaign for brands real and imagined in the heady days of early-1960’s Manhattan.  But unlike previous, happy depictions of New York office life from that era, such as How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying, everything is decidedly darker in Mad Men.  For one thing, Robert Morse, the eager young actor who portrayed the ladder-climbing Finch in How To Succeed is, fifty years later, cast as Sterling Cooper’s eccentric, world-weary patriarch.  And the darkest twist by far involves Don Draper, Sterling Cooper’s enigmatic creative director, who is the living and breathing embodiment of the art and alchemy that is advertising.  Repulsed by his own Dickensian past, and given the chance to assume a new identity when he and his battlefield buddy are both taken for dead, the character takes on his first and grandest ad campaign by literally rebranding himself.

But while Mad Men’s richly layered characters and stories are surely responsible for most of the series’ critical acclaim, trademarks have been supporting actors worthy of an Emmy® nomination.  Over the course of three seasons, Sterling Cooper’s creative team has launched campaigns for Lucky Strike® cigarettes, American Airlines®, London Fog® raincoats, Aqua Net® hairspray, Utz® potato chips, and even some bygone brands like Admiral® TV and Patio® cola.  As one observer shrewdly notes, one brand that is probably glad it wasn’t featured is John Deere®; a recent episode showed a rampaging lawn tractor severing the foot of an unctuous bean counter as the Sterling Cooper creative crew looks on in bemused horror.

Like any client-oriented service profession, Sterling Cooper’s triumphs are tempered by some notable failures.  After following the client’s orders to mimic Ann Margaret’s performance in Bye Bye Birdie for a musical ad for a new Pepsi® diet cola, and delivering a picture-perfect facsimile, Sterling Cooper loses the account when the fickle client changes its mind.  And after relentlessly wooing Hilton® hotels by responding to its idiosyncratic founder Conrad Hilton’s every beck and call, Don Draper loses the account by failing to take seriously “Connie” Hilton’s demand for a campaign showing a Hilton on the moon.

It’s almost as comforting to see that the legal profession doesn’t have a monopoly on demanding clients as it is to see trademarks take center stage on the small screen.