Advertising to Mad Men

As Mad Men opens its fifth season, we present a few ads from The New Yorker archives to get you in a mid-1960s mood.

Solid state. In the 1960's the transistor invented decades earlier at Bell Labs led to technological marvels. Sony sold radios so small you could hold them in your hand. KLH, the second of the companies Henry Kloss helped launch, produced a stereo like no other: big, impressive sound from a stylish, compact system. Most every Ivy Leaguer either owned a Model Twenty or wanted to. Today the last of the Kloss companies, Tivoli, sells radios designed to pay homage to KLH.

Up, up and away. A Mad Man could hail a cab to the airport, run through a shiny terminal and be jetting off to Chicago or Detroit ten or fifteen minutes later.  (Really! Air travel wasn't always a drag.) And so could Wall Streeters trying to keep up with technological change. Shearson's ad highlights the advantages of their analysts' field work. And, yes, they were all men. If Peggy Olson, the copywriter who typed her way up on Mad Men, had chosen Wall Street instead of Madison Avenue, she would have remained a secretary.

Trusts for Travelers. Why take your kid fishing in Long Island Sound when you can fly to Acapulco? In the new jet age, well-heeled men and women were vacationing in Hawaii, weekending in London, skiing in the Alps…and neglecting their investment chores. Like Chase Manhattan, the ancestor of Citibank wanted potential clients to know it was willing and able to help.