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Mark Greif lambasted the television show Mad Men this week in the London Review of Books, admonishing us all for allowing ourselves to let Mad Men use the past to congratulate a largely non-laudable present. I won’t take up Greif’s systematic point, but I do advise fans of the show (as so many of us are in the design industry) to give yourself a moment this week and take what he says seriously.

Regardless of whether you agree with Greif, one facet of the show that is meritorious is the occasional opportunities it provides for us to analyze advertising strategies which, despite their putatively dismissable content (cigarettes, or say, Richard Nixon), are still at very much at play in our current landscape. Witness, for example, Lucky Strikes.

All through the first episode, Draper, as creative director, is racking his brains for the right pitch to sell Lucky Strike cigarettes. Unable to bring even a single good idea into the meeting with his client, Draper asks the company president, who’s come all the way from Winston-Salem, to describe how tobacco is made. ‘We plant it in the South Carolina sunshine,’ the old man drawls, ‘cut it, cure it, toast it – ’ ‘There you go!’ Draper says, and writes: LUCKY STRIKE: IT’S TOASTED. When [Draper] pulls the stunt, you don’t know whether you’re supposed to be impressed or to feel that the whole advertising industry is unconscionable and stupid.

Behind Greif’s rather contentious phrasing, there’s a real question, one that’s still relevant today. Namely, why is it that advertising seems to be able to "say anything it wants," not just in an ethical sense, but also in the sense that seemingly arbitrary taglines, slogans, and brand names?

Draper: "We have six identical companies making six identical products. We can say anything we want."

Basically, I want to know what part of our collective psyche things like "Budweiser: Whaaaasup?" or "It’s Toasted," appeal to, and whether or not we can employ that knowledge in the service of a less heinous goal than, say, flatly undeserving corporate advertising. That’s what I’ll be pondering this weekend, and I invite you to do the same.