Here’s a re-post of a fun article that ran in the Kansas City Star this past Friday. I’m proud to say it features some folks in my department who are way more entertaining than any TV show, in my opinion.

Just another peek into our world here at B-R, even if it’s not exactly the daily reality.

(The thumbnail photo? Well, after a few martinis, it might kinda look like me…)

Spend some time with KC’s own ‘Mad Men’ (and women)

By CINDY HOEDEL
The Kansas City Star

SCENE: INTERIOR BERNSTEIN-REIN, STAFF LOUNGE, NINTH FLOOR

Brent Anderson walks over to the stand-alone bar in the corner. He fills his mug with beer from a freshly tapped keg and walks over to Krista Masilionis.

BRENT: Cheers.

Brent and Krista clink mugs. A handful of employees crowds around the bar, where a prize drawing is being held. Krista’s name is called. She walks to the bar and comes back with an envelope.

KRISTA: Tickets to the Chiefs in the company suite.

BRENT: Nice.

Advertising — as a profession, an industry and an office culture — is glamorous again, thanks to AMC’s critically acclaimed series “Mad Men,” set in a fictional New York City advertising agency on Madison Avenue in the 1960s.

But how much have we “learned” about real-life ad agency culture by following the dramatic story lines and pirate ship crew at the fictional Sterling Cooper agency?

Which characters and recurring themes are spot on, and which preposterous? To find out, we decided to hang out with a single creative team from a prominent, longtime Kansas City ad agency, dropping in on its members at different times and in different situations over two weeks.

Two agencies clearly fill the bill: Barkley and Bernstein-Rein are the largest independent agencies in town, and both were founded in 1964, the era the show takes place in.

Of the two, Bernstein-Rein seemed the obvious choice because of its serendipitous address on Kansas City’s own Madison Avenue. How would our local Mad men (and women) stack up against the characters on the show? Is there a super-suave creative genius like Don Draper? A Cinderella story like secretary-turned-copywriter Peggy Olson? An eccentric founder like Bertram Cooper?

“Beer Friday” at Bernstein-Rein is evidence that drinking in the workplace still goes on, but it’s limited to the last hour of the work week, kicking off around 4 p.m. every Friday.

Compared to office parties at Sterling Cooper on the show, this is pretty tame stuff. No one is sitting on anyone’s lap, no one experiences loss of bladder control, no limbs are severed by tractor demonstrations gone awry.

“The smoking, the drinking, the carousing, I don’t see that going on at all,” says vice president/group account director Vernon Williams.

But the brashness and swagger associated with ad world inhabitants are easy enough to find. “Greed, ambition, confidence — you need a level of all that to be able to stand up in front of a client and sell an idea,” Williams says. “It can border on arrogance.”

Fashion is a huge theme on “Mad Men,” which just ended its third season. (The fourth is expected to begin in summer.) It’s also much in evidence inside the halls of Bernstein-Rein. Clothing is more casual than on the show, but you get the feeling everyone is very much dressing a part.

“We definitely enjoy the creative environment around us, and we dress to feed that,” project manager Amy Stafford says.

For the guys in the creative department, jeans and good-quality T-shirts or polo shirts are the uniform, with the odd necktie or rakish cap to add flair. The key, senior copywriter Brent Anderson says, is to project a relaxed office atmosphere without looking like you just walked in from mowing the lawn.

The women in the creative department wear a wider array of styles, from leggings to pencil skirts to flared trousers. Account execs dress more conservatively but still look chic.

For most, the dress code on any given day depends on the level of client contact. Anderson, for example, has tattoos on both upper arms, but when he meets with clients, he wears a shirt that covers them.

Design is also prominent on “Mad Men.” Interior scenes are shot from low angles so the architecture can be seen, and sets are perfectly propped with period furniture, lamps and barware.

The inside of Bernstein-Rein also has a period feel, but it’s the ’90s rather than the ’60s. Philippe Starck-like postmodern shapes and pure colors mash up with “Miami Vice” boxy black leather armchairs and sofas.

The main lobby on the 15th floor has a soaring atrium, panoramic Plaza views and a coffee bar with local and national newspapers and trade journals neatly laid out on the counter. Seating groups and planters offer an inviting refuge to guests and employees alike. It looks like a stylish urban café, and the gourmet coffee and teas are free.

The creative workspaces are more whimsically decorated than account areas, as one would expect. A pingpong table and a kooky Dr. Seuss-looking purple chair enliven the new-media corner. Desks are clumped in the center of the floor, leaving the perimeter with its big-window views open for communal gathering areas.

Only the executive floor, 16, has the old-fashioned layout of Sterling Cooper’s offices, with assistants’ desks in the center and offices ringing the perimeter.

The open physical layouts of the accounts and creative areas reflect their management structure. Everybody, regardless of rank, gets a little cubicle area on the inside — nobody has an office with a door.

“There are fewer walls, literally and figuratively,” Anderson says. “It’s less stiff. You could look at that show and go, they’re not stiff — they’re drinking. But roles are very strictly defined, there’s a lot of disrespect, and people can be fired just like that. There’s more camaraderie today. And especially in this economy, there’s a realization we’re all in this together.”

At Sterling Cooper, the bugaboo in the last two seasons has been the sale of the company to a British firm. At Bernstein-Rein, it’s the rotten economy. The company has downsized from around 350 employees two years ago to 240 today. The economy intensified the pain of losing two major accounts: Wal-Mart and United Services Automobile Association. And now the company has lost the Bayer Animal Health account.

Another blow came when plans to move into spectacular new 21st-century offices were scrapped when the West Edge development backed by Bernstein-Rein’s founder, Bob Bernstein, came apart and fell into bankruptcy.

“That was a letdown,” Anderson says. “This is nice, but the new workplace would have been state-of-the-art.”

INTERIOR BERNSTEIN-REIN — CONFERENCE AREA IN CREATIVE DEPARTMENT

Six writers, designers and art directors sit around a small coffee table. Krista Masilionis spreads out color printouts of logos, exterior signage, display cases and Web site pages.

KRISTA: The client has requested a campaign, but I think we should go in and do a small branding for them. Knock their socks off, and then get the billboards. That’s their largest advertising outlay.

Client pitches today are more complex than they were in the 1960s, when print, billboard, radio and television were the only types of advertising. Agencies have to take a much wider view of how to best reach potential consumers now that computers, cell phones and social networking sites such as Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook are in the mix.

Masilionis has called a creative team meeting to review ideas for an upcoming pitch to a jewelry client.

“I want to bring in five new ideas for promotions,” Masilionis says. Anderson says he would feel more comfortable looking at the client’s existing promotions and offering ways to do them better. Agencies today, much more than in the ’60s, grapple with the problem of how to prevent clients from trying to get work for free during the review process.

Masilionis says, “Well, we need to do both.” More discussion follows, and Anderson and Masilionis arrive at a compromise, agreeing to present new ideas, but not fully fleshed out.

They both remember a recent pitch for a national retailer that went bad. The agency spent more than $100,000 on a comprehensive review, only to have the client cancel the review meeting at its headquarters in another state as Masilionis and president Steve Bernstein were stepping off the plane.

“I’d love to walk in there with a couple of ideas of what their tagline could be,” Masilionis says. Some of the writers have generated suggestions, but Masilionis thinks the text needs to incorporate one of the key ideas that is important to the client.

“It’s going to be hard to get them away from ideas about generations and family history.” She suggests a tagline that incorporates one of the words the client likes and using the other new ideas as headline treatments.

Clients can get really hung up on a single word, Masilionis says. “If that word isn’t in there, they stop listening.”

Steve Bernstein has seen that happen, too. Like his favorite character on “Mad Men,” Roger Sterling, Bernstein is the second generation in the business his father founded. But he first experienced the agency as a client when he owned a group of Blockbuster video stores in the western U.S., and his father was running the agency.

Bernstein says one of his favorite lines from the show came from the Conrad Hilton character. Creative director Don Draper has delivered a seemingly brilliant pitch for print ads for Hilton hotels worldwide. (“How do you say ice water in Italian? Hilton. How do you say fresh towels in Farsi? Hilton. How do you say hamburger in Japanese? Hilton.”)

But Hilton, disappointed that Draper didn’t include the moon as a future location, says, “When I say I want the moon, I expect the moon.”

The show also illustrates how giving the client exactly what he asks for can be fraught with peril, says account supervisor Erik Drake. Drake related to an episode in which a client loved Ann-Margret singing “Bye Bye Birdie” and asked for a spot with a girl just like her singing about the company’s diet soft drink.

“They gave the client exactly that, and the client didn’t like it and couldn’t say why,” Drake says. “That happens. Sometimes you have to go all the way down a road before the client sees their original idea isn’t working.”

Another of Bernstein’s favorite scenes also touches on the complex agency-client relationship: Account executive Pete Campbell is getting chewed out by founding partner Bert Cooper after a client hates Campbell’s pitch. When Campbell protests he didn’t do anything wrong, Sterling comes to his defense, sort of, saying, “Sometimes in this business it just comes down to, I don’t like that guy.”

Bernstein says he wishes Sterling had expressed it in a more positive way, but the observation is true. “We’re in a big-idea business, but we’re also in a relationship business,” he says.

Even more than keeping clients happy, Bernstein says, his job is to motivate employees and “manage the highs and lows” of the emotional climate inside the agency. Another favorite Sterling line crystallizes that aspect of his job, he says.

The setup: account executive Ken Cosgrove drives a lawn tractor into the office to celebrate landing the John Deere account. A horrific accident ensues — a man loses a foot. Afterward some employees are sitting dumbstruck on a couch as a worker squeegees gore off the window behind them, and Sterling says, “Believe me, somewhere in this business, this has happened before.”

“I love that,” Bernstein says. “Because every day is completely different, and you just have to roll with it, whatever happens.”

Another familiar theme on the show is tension between people in “accounts” and “creative.” Everyone agrees that nothing has changed on that front.

“Creative, all they’re thinking is: my idea, my idea, my idea, without budgetary constraints,” Williams says. “I have to think of both.”

Graphic designers, art directors and copywriters want to protect creativity, and account execs want to protect the account.

“You want to believe you’re making art, but all the time you’re working for a client. It’s not art,” Bernstein says.

One thing accounts and creative have in common, and that never changes, is the long hours agency work demands.

Williams is married and has a 6-year-old son. He is often in the office from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. and travels almost every week for a day or two. He uses Skype so his son can see him when he’s away from home.

On “Mad Men,” Don Draper keeps a fresh shirt in his desk drawer. “When I see him do it, I think I should, too,” says Bernstein, who admits he has slept on his office couch at least once — by accident, not on purpose.

It’s hard to truly leave work when everyone in the office has your cell number and calls and texts you daily, Bernstein says. “Anybody who works in an agency has chosen that as a lifestyle,” he says.

Bernstein is going through a divorce but is devoted to his two kids, ages 9 and 4, he says. “That lifestyle can be difficult on a family.”

Although Anderson lives with his wife and two sons, 6 and 3, in a leafy suburb (Fairway) like Don Draper, the similarity ends there.

“When Draper comes home, between his wife and the housekeeper, everything is done. I have to contribute,” he says. “I want to be involved with my kids. I go to PTA meetings.” During crunch times when new business hits, he goes home at 6 p.m. and returns to the office later.

For Masilionis, juggling career, marriage and three children under age 5 leaves little room for hobbies or sports. “I invest in Spanx instead of a gym membership,” she says.

In 2007, Bernstein-Rein invested some time and money in itself. Following the departure of Wal-Mart, the agency underwent rebranding, in a campaign that won awards for the big-B-little-R-in-a-box logo and the slogan, “Be real.”

The rebranding left the agency better positioned to go after new retail business, which it could not do when it had the Wal-Mart account, Bernstein says. It also freshened the company’s image in the brave new digital world.

“In the show, TV had just come on the scene. There was excitement and fear about moving into that new frontier. It’s exactly the same today as we look at the digital age,” he says.

A lot of old rules are going out the door. For example, the rule that says brands can be built only through television. “Starbucks created a powerful brand without doing advertising,” Bernstein says.

Another rule that has bitten the dust: The argument to clients that they should not look for immediate return on their investment on brand advertising. “ ‘It builds trust, you can build it over time, we’ll drive sales with promotional advertising,’ we’d tell them. No more. Everyone wants immediate results.”

Like many agencies, Bernstein-Rein has created an analytics department solely to measure results.

Another sea change is that agencies are no longer the only influence on creative work. Businesses now have a chief marketing officer. There’s more of a balance of power. That creates a whole different dynamic.

“Sterling Cooper had much more authority than agencies today,” Bernstein says.

“Mad Men” writers have created fictional accounts of ad work for real brands including London Fog, John Deere, Hilton, Admiral and Aqua Net.

Some familiar brands Bernstein-Rein has done real work for recently include: launching 100-calorie packs for Hostess, launching McCafe in-store coffee counters and Angus Burgers for McDonald’s, the “Slow food is good food” slogan for Crock-Pot and a recently launched campaign for PetSmart.

INTERIOR BERNSTEIN-REIN — BOB BERNSTEIN’S OFFICE

At one end of a long office with windows on two sides is a small antique desk and an intimate seating group. Bob Bernstein walks toward the other end of the office, which is filled with display cases of collections, Duane Hanson sculptures that look like real human beings, primitive “motion sculptures,” a glowing video art installation, a giant steel ball maze mounted to the wall, and a jukebox. He picks up a red, hard-plastic drinking straw formed in the shape of an M, puts it to his lips and looks intently at his visitor.

BOB : I invented this!

Bob Bernstein’s office could not be more different from that of Bert Cooper, the founding partner on “Mad Men.” And yet, both reflect their respective founder’s personality and eccentricities.

On the show, visitors to Cooper’s office have to remove their shoes before entering the tasteful sanctuary furnished with Japanese art and antiques. Visitors to Bernstein’s office get to play with very expensive toys.

The senior Bernstein is still CEO of the company his son Steve now runs. He is also the only person in the building who lived the mad ad life in the ’60s.

Some of the cultural things on the show are dead-on, Bernstein says. “There was a lot of smoking and a lot of drinking, but mostly at night. You never saw a woman in a management position. Women were secretaries, and they were all grouped together in the middle of the room with the offices around the perimeter, just like on the show. That’s exactly how it was.”

The first hire Bernstein made was a woman named Ruth Burke, who turned out to be an even more successful version of Peggy Olson on the show. Burke started out as a combination secretary and receptionist, but eventually she was promoted to buyer and went on to open her own media company in Kansas City. But her story was the exception.

“You never saw a woman as a salesperson. A lot of talented women were held down in those days,” Bernstein says.

What he remembers most about the era wasn’t the work-hard, play-hard excess, but the youth movement. “After Kennedy, this young president, there was a sense that young people could be put in positions of great responsibility. Creative directors were in their early 20s, and by 27, they were done.”

One thing has changed in a good way, in Bernstein’s eyes. “In the late ’60s and early ’70s, everything was an expression of self, but today people are more responsible. Everyone respects everyone else. You work with people, not for people. Men are much more family-oriented. More men are taking baby leave today.”

Still, a little bit of magic has been lost. “There was a lot of showmanship in those days. Pitches were absolutely more emotional. Today it’s a science. There was more mystique back then.”

FADE OUT

Character he loves to hate: “Pete Campbell. He’s this smarmy account person who is such a little boy inside, so arrogant he thinks he can take on Don and his superiors, but at the end of the day you know his wife’s got him by the tail.”