Despite basically getting dissed in the November 8th season finale of Mad Men, McCann Erickson seems to be having a good sense of humor about it all.
In the episode–SPOILER ALERT–Sterling Cooper is being sold to McCann Erickson yet several main staffers don’t want any part of it and strike out on their own to form Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. Well, McCann NY, which has enough to deal with in real life, is taking it all in stride, having purchased ads this week in Adweek, Brandweek and Mediaweek which carry the headline “Welcome, Sterling Cooper.”
The ads, which are signed “Your friends at McCann Erickson”, lead readers to the homepage of McCann NY, who spliced together various utterances of “McCann” or “McCann Erickson” in the episode and produced a greeting clip on the front page.
Speaking to the New York Times’ Media Decoder blog, McCann NY EVP/CCO Joyce King Thomas acknowledges the allusions to her agency in the episode are negative but says the characters’ reactions are “pretty standard” in the agency business during a merger or takeover. Yet in a truly meta moment, when asked if McCann would wind up with the scabs since the main forces of Sterling are leaving, King Thomas laughingly replied, “We’ll see. You never know how these things turn out.” Indeed.
More: “MadMen: The Recap of Recaps”