“Mad Men” Water Cooler: “Far Away Places”

Welcome to this week’s Mad Men watercooler! As always, spoilers are ahead, so if you haven’t watched last night’s episode, find a place far away from this post…

Mad Men Water Cooler – “Far Away Places”

First off, RIP Roger and Jane’s marriage. You had a good run, and honestly lasted a lot longer than I expected you to, but it was time to let this one go. Does this free up Roger for Joan, perhaps? Or is she going to continue her trend of telling the no-good men in her life to file it where the sun doesn’t shine?

Has there ever been a more tricky account for Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce than Heinz Beans? The only worse client I can think of is Lucky Strike (and yes, I still miss Sal). This week, after much hard work Peggy struck out with her “Home is Where the Heinz Is” pitch, getting herself removed from the Heinz account after telling the client off.

Will SCDP ever land the Heinz account? Not according to history.

In 1967, Maurice Drake sat munching on a sandwich and enjoying a pint of beer at the Victoria Pub in London. The ad-man and his team were as stumped as the folks at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce by how to market the company’s infamous baked beans. To break through the writer’s block, Drake took his team to lunch at the local pub, where pints of beer took the place of the hard alcohol favored by the SCDP troop.

“I was just scribbling on my pad when it dawned on me that you could end ‘beans’ with a ‘z’, just as Heinz did,” said Drake in a 2004 press release from Heinz . “Then it just came to me – ‘Beanz Meanz Heinz’.”

The slogan and its accompanying jingle were phenomenally successful, taking the top spot over slogans like Nike’s “Just Do It” in a January 2012 poll ranking the 25 best slogans in advertising history by Creative Design magazine. The product continues to be incredibly successful in Britain, where an estimated 485 million cans are sold every year.

While Peggy has been giving it her all with the good people of Heinz beans, it looks like this is one client Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce won’t be signing. Given Matthew Weiner’s aversion to giving anything away about upcoming episodes and story-lines, it’s surprising that he would choose a product that went with such a famous slogan. However, he did make Don responsible for the naming of the Kodak Carousel projector in the season one, so who knows how history will turn out according to Matthew Weiner?

What are your thoughts on this week’s episode? Give us a shout –out in the comments below!