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Distinctive 'Mad Men' reaches out to today's style, culture By Bill Keveney, USA TODAY

LOS ANGELES — The world of Sterling Cooper is changing.

At the end of last season, the '60s Madison Avenue ad agency was taken over by a British company. Now, executive responsibilities have been shuffled. And the firm is embracing the young medium of television as a commercial is being shot on this day for one of its top clients.

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But some things haven't changed as the much-heralded AMC drama enters Season 3 Sunday (10 ET/PT). That client, Lucky Strike (It's toasted!), dates to the Mad Men premiere in 2007. And the conference room table on this Mad Men set, where the principals have gathered for the commercial postmortem, is lined with Bloody Marys. "Morning meetings. Oh, yeah, absolutely," says , whose Roger Sterling has been known to knock back a few. "That would be a tradition people would like to revive."

Just as the ad men craft a TV message to shape the cigarette brand, Mad Men has become its own valuable brand, certified by Emmys and Golden Globes. Its 16 Emmy nominations this year — tops for a dramatic series — include one for best drama, an award it won last year.

Its audience is considered modest even by cable's lesser standards (averaging 1.5 million viewers). But the story of the turmoil behind the work and family lives at a New York ad agency is extending its influence over fashion, design and even libations, with leading man () raising the status of the Old Fashioned. (That's bourbon, bitters, sugar and soda water, with a twist, on the rocks.)

"I do think that culturally, if not ratings-wise, our show has a pretty significant footprint," says Hamm, whose sharply dressed Draper has become iconic in his own right.

In the past two weeks, more than 500,000 people created their own Mad Men likenesses using an online avatar program. There have been parodies on Saturday Night Live (which Hamm hosted) and (with Homer subbing for Draper), with one from Sesame Streeton the way.

Promotional tie-ins include one with Clorox for the Season 2 DVD and another for Season 3 that features Mad Men at more than 400 Banana Republic stores (Mad About Style!). Heavy response to a contest that offered a walk-on cameo jammed the network website's servers this week.

And AMC plans to display its season premiere on Times Square's big screen Sunday night.

"This little engine that could blew up into this weird phenomenon," Hamm says. "It's a tremendous compliment to everybody who works on the show."

For a series that waited seven years to get from script to screen, it has been a whirlwind.

"Starting from zero, it has been an exponential increase in attention," says creator Matthew Weiner, whose own recent contract negotiations played big in the press.

Mad Men, along with Breaking Bad, has also helped movie-oriented AMC expand its identity, network president Charlie Collier says.

"We rebranded the network recently under the heading 'Story Matters Here.' I don't think we would have been able to say that credibly if we weren't creating original stories," Collier says. The stories help "bring in a new audience to AMC in a unique way."

In the spotlight

Weiner sensed that Mad Men hit a higher level of exposure when it shared the stage with movie stars at the Golden Globes in January. (It won two the previous year, one for the series and one for Hamm, but the star-studded awards show wasn't held because of the writers' strike.)

"I realized that the audience that had tuned in to see Kate Winslet and Angelina Jolie was hearing what my show was," he says. "That's when I started hearing from people I hadn't seen since high school."

Jack Nicholson, a fan, interviewed , who plays Don's wife, Betty Draper, for the current Interview magazine. Jones was thrilled when Meryl Streep told her she watched the series at a SAG Awards party in January. "It was an amazing experience to have Meryl Streep rave about the show," she says.

Mad Men has established itself among ordinary fans as well. Bryan Batt, who plays art director Salvatore Romano, sees it at his home furnishings store, where customers have come in hoping to get a picture of him as part of their purchase.

Slattery discovered fans during recent trips to Australia, Ireland and Italy. "I was standing in the Piazza del Popolo in Rome, and someone came up to me and I thought he was going to ask for directions. And he said with a heavy Italian accent, 'You are the one in Mad Men,' " he says. "That was when I realized the show was bigger than I thought it was."

The amped-up acclaim and awareness may have emboldened Weiner to "hit the ground running" in the season opener, hoping the audience will grab on for the ride without the need for recapping where the characters finished last season: in the middle of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.

"I got a little braver and just said, 'Have confidence that somebody likes what you're doing,' " Weiner says. He closely guards specific plotlines for the new season, set in 1963, but says viewers may want to ask these questions: Will Don stay faithful? What's happened to the ad firm? Did the British executives who took over the agency stay or leave?

One theme, Weiner says, is a line from Don: "I keep going places and ending up some place I've already been."

Substance behind style

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Mad Men stands out in part because it is different, a period piece in a contemporary TV world, about a profession that draws sharp distinction with the usual small-screen cops and docs.

"It has such a specific style, that it's easy to do this parody and that parody," says , who plays young copywriter . "I think at first people were fascinated by the style and the '60s and the costumes and the smoking and drinking. If it were only that, it would have failed very quickly. There's so much more underneath. That's why it survived."

Media and fashion tastemakers have been drawn to the style and themes of the show, says (Bert Cooper), who won a Tony in 1962 portraying a young ad man in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. "A television show with this reach to people who are in creative work for all the magazines, they are astute enough to say, 'We've got to bring back the fashions of Mad Men,' " Morse says. Designer Michael Kors says on his website that his 2008 collection was partly inspired by the series.

The show, set in a groundbreaking ad era known as "The Creative Revolution," may differ from other series, but its topic is familiar, says Jacqueline Reid, director of the Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History at Duke University Libraries.

"Advertising reflects popular culture," she says. "I think when people watch, they remember campaigns from when they were younger. To watch people create advertising campaigns has some fascination in seeing cause-and-effect."

All the attention gives Mad Men a chance to further increase its profile and viewership. Ratings grew 50% in Season 2, a big jump but still far behind top cable originals that average 4 million to 7 million viewers. (The Season 2 DVD ranks among the top 10 TV DVD debuts of the year.)

"It's more a cultural than a commercial hit, yet it clearly outperforms a standard movie AMC would put in its time slot," says John Rash, senior vice president at the Campbell Mithun advertising agency. He doesn't believe the audience will grow substantially, because the likeliest viewers are already aware of the show. And he says it would be a mistake for the show to change itself to broaden its audience.

"As in politics, first, don't ignore your base," Rash says.

Not an elitist show

That base is valuable. Of basic cable original series, Mad Men draws the highest percentage (49%) of viewers 25 to 54 who make $100,000-plus, which makes it particularly appealing to advertisers. BMW signed on as Sunday's sole sponsor for an episode with limited interruption.

Some suggest the show's appeal is concentrated among elites in the media capitals of New York and Los Angeles. But (Pete Campbell) says it resonates with people in his hometown in suburban Minnesota. "People back there love the show, and they're moved by it," he says. "Don Draper is a man who comes from nothing and builds himself. It's a story about the American Dream."

Says Weiner: "I'm not an elitist. I'm an entertainer. I get criticized that it's One Life to Live half the time and that it's elitist the other half of the time. (Mad Men viewers) are people who are open and not afraid of new things. … It's not because they're smarter or more artistically sophisticated."

He says he wants "everyone on the planet to watch," but not at the expense of pandering. He plans to keep making the show as he sees fit, which may be the best way to maintain brand loyalty. It's "just asserting that quality is going to be your product."

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