[8][9][10] The series covers the advertising industry centered on Madison Avenue in New York City in the 1960's, primarily following the professional and personal life of protagonist, Don Draper, a creative director and partner at a Manhattan firm.

Lacking a suitable network buyer, they tabled sales efforts until years later, when a talent manager on Weiner's team, Ira Liss, pitched the series to AMC Vice President of Development Christina Wayne.

[11][12] Weiner collaborated with cinematographer Phil Abraham and production designers Robert Shaw (who worked on the pilot only) and Dan Bishop to develop a visual style "influenced more by cinema than television.

The opening title sequence features credits superimposed over a graphic animation of a businessman falling from a height, surrounded by skyscrapers with reflections of period advertising posters and billboards, accompanied by a short edit of the instrumental "A Beautiful Mine" by RJD2.

[36] In addition to creating the series, Matthew Weiner was the showrunner, head writer, and an executive producer; he contributed to each episode through writing or co-writing the scripts, casting various roles, and approving costume and set designs.

Alan Taylor, Phil Abraham, Jennifer Getzinger, Lesli Linka Glatter, Tim Hunter, Andrew Bernstein, and Michael Uppendahl were regular directors for the series.

This theme is explored most candidly through Don Draper's identity fraud during and after the Korean War, in which he takes on the name of an officer, whom he had accidentally killed, to desert the army and enter a more prestigious and successful lifestyle.

The show presents a workplace culture in which it is frequently assumed that female employees are sexually available for their male bosses, and in which jokes about the desirability of one's wife dying are told by husbands in front of their own wives.

"[56] Aviva Dove-Viebahn wrote that "Mad Men straddles the line between a nuanced portrayal of how sexism and patriarchal entitlement shape lives, careers and social interactions in the 1960s and a glorified rendering of the 'fast-paced, chauvinistic world of 1960s advertising and all that comes with it.

Three-martini lunches were the norm…while we were still looking at the menu, the third would arrive.… The only thing that saved us was that the clients and agencies that we were going back to drank as much as we did.… Bottles in desk drawers were not the exception but the rule.The Los Angeles Times opined that Mad Men excels at "stories of characters fighting to achieve personal liberation in the restless years before the advent of the full-blown culture wars.

"[54] One reviewer was excited that the fourth season, through Peggy, brought "the introduction to the Counterculture (Andy Warhol as the King of Pop and Leader of the Band), with all the loud music, joint-passing, underground movies so present in those times.

The Huffington Post focused on one scene where "Peggy joins her new beatnik friends in the lobby while Pete stays behind with the SCDP partners to relish…his newly captured $6 million account.

[66] Slate writer Tanner Colby praised the show's treatment of race and Madison Avenue as historically accurate, especially the storyline in the third season episode "The Fog" in which Pete Campbell's idea to market certain products specifically towards African-Americans is struck down by the company.

Colby also pointed to an exposé published in a 1963 issue of Ad Age that revealed that "out of over 20,000 employees, the report identified only 25 blacks working in any kind of professional or creative capacity, i.e., nonclerical or custodial."

[19] In the pilot, representatives of Lucky Strike cigarettes come to Sterling Cooper looking for a new advertising campaign in the wake of a Reader's Digest report that smoking will lead to illnesses, including lung cancer.

[77][78][79][80] The American Film Institute selected it as one of the top ten television programs in each year it aired: 2007,[81] 2008,[82] 2009,[83] 2010,[84] 2012,[85] 2013,[86] 2014,[87] and was singled out for the "Special Award" in 2015 to honor the show's final season and legacy.

"[45] Regarding season 3, Matthew Gilbert of The Boston Globe wrote "it's an absolutely gorgeous, amber-tinted vision of the early 1960s" and added "detailed with enough 1950s-era accoutrements to seem authentically Camelot.

"[26] A Chicago Sun-Times reviewer described the series as an "unsentimental portrayal of complicated 'whole people' who act with the more decent 1960 manners America has lost, while also playing grab-ass and crassly defaming subordinates.

"[108] The reaction at Entertainment Weekly was similar, noting how in the period in which Mad Men takes place, "play is part of work, sexual banter isn't yet harassment, and America is free of self-doubt, guilt, and countercultural confusion.

"[110] The show also received critical praise for its historical accuracy – mainly its depictions of gender and racial bias, sexual dynamics in the workplace, and the high prevalence of smoking and drinking.

Reconciling those two seemingly contradictory impulses over seven seasons was heartbreaking, hilarious, bleak and inspiring, generating a lifetime of instantly recognizable memes, marvelously quotable dialogue and indelible moments.

[153] George Lois, who worked at Doyle Dane Bernbach for a year, before starting his own ad agency in 1960, said:[154]Mad Men is nothing more than the fulfilment of every possible stereotype of the early 1960s bundled up nicely to convince consumers that the sort of morally repugnant behavior exhibited by its characters…is glamorous and vintage.… [U]nlike the TV 'Mad Men,' we worked full, exhausting, joyous days: pitching new business, creating ideas, "comping" them up, storyboarding them, selling them, photographing them, and directing commercials.

Andrew Cracknell, author of The Real Mad Men: The Renegades of Madison Avenue and the Golden Age of Advertising, also thought the show lacked authenticity, stating, "One thing of which they [...] are all equally contemptuous", in regards to the industry's elite, "is the output of Sterling Cooper.

[157][158][159][160] Many elements of the show were commended including its unique episode and season structures, subtle and atmospheric tone, exploration of feminism, attention to detail and its overall approach regarding history.

[168][169][170] Don Draper's rendition of the Frank O'Hara poem "Mayakovsky" from Meditations in an Emergency, at the end of "For Those Who Think Young" (season two, episode one), led to the poet's work entering the top 50 sales on Amazon.com.

"[176] The appearance of Christina Hendricks as office manager Joan, is said to have sparked a renewed interest in a voluptuous look for women and to be partly responsible for, among other things, a 10 percent increase in breast augmentation in the United Kingdom in 2010.

The store also ran a "casting call" competition, in which participants were asked to mail photos of themselves in period fashion for a chance at a walk-on part in the show;[199] two winners were announced in October 2010.

[201] In spring 2010, Mattel released a series of limited-edition collectible Barbie and Ken dolls based on the characters Don and Betty Draper, Joan Holloway, and Roger Sterling.

[203] Mad Men featured a significant number of products and brands that existed both in the 1960s and at the time of airing, many of them shown as advertising clients, including Lucky Strike, Bethlehem Steel, Heineken, Volkswagen, Cadillac, Playtex, Chanel, Spam, Utz, Maidenform, Gillette, American Airlines and Clearasil.

Soon afterward, the consumer-rights activist group Commercial Alert filed a complaint with the United States Distilled Spirits Council alleging that Jack Daniel's was violating liquor advertising standards since the show features "depictions of overt sexual activity" as well as irresponsible intoxication.