Mad Men & Don Draper in the 21st Century: Advertising Guru Robert Chandler On Technological Advances, Selling New Ideas and David Beckham’s Package

Allison has an in depth one-on-one with legendary advertising strategist, Robert Chandler where they openly explore the intricacies of the industry. Mr. Chandler shares candidly about his history and experiences in advertising over the last few decades shedding light on the changing cultural and political landscape, advertising ethics and how best to ‘execute the concept.’

Guest Bio

Robert Chandler, fearless leader of General Levitation, is a creative director, copywriter, and advertising strategist of wide and eclectic experience. Majoring in technology – though hardly limited to it — he is apparently the only person on the planet to serve as creative director for three cornerstone tech companies — Apple, IBM, and Microsoft, which accounts for his being completely conversant in the world of Web communications that he played his bit in popularizing.
Robert has led in senior creative roles at the world’s premiere agencies, including ChiatDay, BBDO, and Ogilvy & Mather. His group at Ogilvy originated the worldwide IBM “subtitles” campaign, “Solutions for a small planet” featuring Nuns, elderly Frenchmen, and international surfers. At BBDO, he helped build for Apple their powerful brand. Highlights included the Randy Newman “I’m different” spot. For Microsoft his campaigns launched many watershed products, including Excel, Word, & Windows.
As head of General Levitation, he designed the launch for Hitachi PC, renaming that company Hitachi Mobilized Computing. Driven by the theme “Make things happen wherever you happen to be,” Hitachi accelerated in six months from a standing start to the top tiers in market share. He later launched NetZero, the pioneer free Internet access provider with the highly successful “Defenders of the Free World” campaign.
Other clients handled under the aegis of their international agencies include the Navy, Chevrolet, Nissan, Sony, Mitsubishi, Alaska Airlines, and Continental Airlines.
Meanwhile, Robert’s glamorous Hollywood twin focused on entertainment advertising for ABC, CBS, and the launch of E! As well as hundreds of movies including such classics as Jaws, All the President’s Men, Midway, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, The Right Stuff, and Risky Business.
Robert’s work has won every major ad award for his clients- — Clios, One Show, Beldings, N.Y. Art Directors Club, + Gold and Silver Lions at Cannes. Some of his campaigns won zero awards, but nonetheless, were very good for business.

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Episode Breakdown

00:01 Intro
03:15 NetZero Defector Commercial
04:45 Give us a sense of how you went about creating this advertising campaign.
07:10 Would you reference a book in an advertisement today like the “1984 Apple commercial?”
10:10 When you advertise for an appliance do you have to show your audience how it works?
12:30 What is advertising and marketing?
13:40 Commoditizing the product and branding.
14:35 Do you apply the branding term to television?
17:34 Why did you go into advertising?
20:00 Why the mailroom is a good place to start.
22:35 Tell us about the advertising company hierarchy.
24:00 What do you think about all the T&A in advertising today? Is it disrespectful?
25:53 Is it enough to just be talking about it?
26:45 Advertising awards.
27:26 Do some of your clients just have a desire to be noticed regardless of how?
31:00 When you advertise for a film like “All The President’s Men,” do you need to do things differently?
34:20 Modern movie trailers and being at odds with the marketers.
37:10 Hitachi Commercial.
37:56 How did you come up with the concept behind this campaign?
44:20 What are the best/worst examples of media sites on the web? Why don’t or do they work?
49:33 What is not being communicated on the web?
50:24 How do you feel about controversial ads? Does it work?
52:33 What’s the most controversial ad you’ve done?
54:30 NetZero Mccarthyism Commercial.
57:20 Did you catch flack for doing a black and white commercial.
58:20 NetZero Sub Commercial.
59:48 Movies as an influence.
1:00:38 How do you feel about newspapers and magazines using a paywall on the web? Is it effective?
1:04:51 Being mindful of digital slavery.
1:06:20 Intolerance for people’s political ideas.
1:07:44 Have you done political ads?
1:08:50 How can the audience make themselves more discerning when seeing advertising.
1:10:07 Wrap up.