Mad Men's Don Draper's Wisdom - Draper-ism

Simple yet effectiveStarting with one of my personal favourites, this is something which probably anyone and everyone can practice, in possibly any task one takes up. The key to a great product or for that matter an advert, considering Mad Men, lies in making it as easy and simple as it can be with supreme effectiveness.

Think Differently

 Sometimes we find ourselves stuck in situations wherein, people around us tend to make us accept things which are forced and we wish things turned around. Especially in the fields of marketing and sales, it becomes important that one is heard and one needs to know, how to change the conversation.

Work with emotions

 This is a prerequisite, customer delight, and satisfaction, have been of utmost priority in any sort of communication a company does for a product. Because in the end, the customer is the king, especially the new empowered ones, it’s difficult to get things passed them.

Focus on customer retention, rather than lead generation (do not generalise, for specific cases)

Keep the customers you already have happy and content, rather than finding new ones. To add more gravitas to the dialogue, ‘a bird in hand is better than two in the bush’. Keeping customers happy, who better to comment on this than Draper himself.

Fail, never shy away, it will be your greatest lesson

When you have no inhibitions in failing, you feel free to work in such an environment and it becomes more conducive. Either way, when you feel free to fail, and you are brave enough to fail, you take the chances necessary to make it in business.

Change is the only constant
Draper being Draper, this is golden.
Change cannot be fought, you need to live with it, it happens. Pace yourselves, or be left behind.

Things are not what they always seem to be 

Last one, this one’s quite interesting but a bit dark at the same time. This is the harsh truth of how advertisers and companies have been manipulating and creating ways of selling, what not, on days like Valentines, Friendships and many more. As a businessperson, this is a great lesson because when selling, you must oftentimes create something out of nothing.

P.S. Apologies, if some of you did not get the references, but that’s just motivation enough for you folks, to start watching this epic show.