Mad Men is back, and so is product placement
Will Don Draper mention Chase this season? The AMC hit show, based on an ad agency in the 1960s, has been a dream for some products and an unwelcome sight for others.
Chase Sapphire has only been around since 2009, so you won't be seeing Mad Men's characters charging liquid lunches on their personal Chase Sapphire cards. There's an obvious difficulty to integrating a new brand within a show set in the 1960s.
But those constraints won't keep you from seeing the Chase brand all over Mad Men this season. Chase Sapphire has worked with AMC and Mad Men's creative team to create a multi-level brand campaign featuring advertising vignettes during the show, online media, and events. Chase is sponsoring this year's 'New York's Gone MAD' screening in Times Square, where Sapphire cardholders will see the show in a special premiere event. The bank will also host a finale cocktail party.
'Madvertising' cards will talk about the Chase brand and its history as a segue into commercial breaks, which will include more traditional Chase Sapphire ads. Chase told Fortune that Mad Men's fan base matches ideally with the affluent customers it is trying to attract to their new luxury card.
"We're open for business, but it's not a situation where we will do anything outside of the authenticity of the show," says Charlie Collier, president of AMC. "I guarantee Don Draper would have loved an iPad, but you'll never see him use one."
But not all products that appear in the show are paid placements. Click through to see which brands paid and which didn't.
Update: Chase and AMC say the partnership does not include mentions by the characters within the show's scripts. An earlier version of this story said the Chase brand would be mentioned during the episodes.
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