BioCoder #9

Chapter 2. Marketing Synthetic Biology

Karen Ingram

Perhaps the most well-known marketing professional is creative director Don Draper, the main character of the AMC drama Mad Men. Throughout the series, Don is the creator and custodian of the “Big Idea,” spinning narratives and captivating clients and consumers alike. The series shows Don wooing clients and gallivanting with vixens, but it also shows him attending French cinema, hanging with beatniks, and participating in other cultural experiences relevant for the time period. Throughout the series, Don explores cultural context; inspiration in which to nestle his product or service, a catalyst for his “Big Idea.” In the grand finale of Mad Men, Don Draper is a creative director at McCann Erikson struggling to find himself, or maybe just a metaphor for a big ticket client. Through a series of experiences at a picturesque ocean side retreat in California, Don reaches his sought-after epiphany—he reappropriates the hand holding, hair swinging, utopian culture of the early 70s hippie enlightenment into a Coke ad. You know—THAT Coke ad: “It’s the Real Thing.” It just so happens that McCann Erikson, a real agency in New York, was indeed responsible for that ad… the real thing.

Don Draper is a product of traditional marketing (advertising of the “genius steals” nature). Like Don Draper, I was a creative director at McCann Erikson. I was also a creative director at an agency called Campfire. Campfire is a newer marketing model, that ...