Picture Don Draper a few years down the road, gripping an AARP card instead of a tumbler of Canadian Club, and you’ve got Don Blauweiss.
On a recent Friday morning, the 78-year-old Mr. Blauweiss was in a green Jeep stick-shift waiting for The Observer at the Metro-North station in Bronxville. He was sporting a black leather jacket, black turtleneck and a full head of curly white hair. “My red BMW is in the shop,” the self-described New Yorkquino apologized in a laidback Queens cadence.
As we stuttered through the sloping streets of the tony Eastchester suburb, Mr. Blauweiss described the AMC drama as “meticulous down to every detail—the princess telephones, the wardrobing.” He should know. In the sixties, Mr. Blauweiss got his start as a twentysomething art director at Doyle Dane Bernbach, the agency credited with setting off a “creative revolution” that transformed Madison Avenue, upending the Sterling Coopers of the world in the process.
It’s a trick he’d like to pull off again. With several compadres from the old days, Mr. Blauweiss has just launched a new advertising consultancy, Senior Creative People, targeting an overlooked demographic: his own.
“The only thing that’s somewhat different from my experience was the amount of drinking that they did,” he went on, pivoting the jeep up the hill of his driveway. “There was plenty of drinking going on. There were even a couple who might keep a bottle in the desk. But nobody, at least not at DDB, had a bar in their office. Now don’t forget! Sterling Cooper was the antithesis of Doyle Dane, so who knows . . .”
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