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How to Sell Health Reform Like Don Draper

Obama needs to tap his inner Mad Man

By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff

Posted Aug 29, 2009 7:35 PM CDT

(Newser) – If Barack Obama’s going to sell the masses on health care reform, he’s going to need to hire a consultant: Don Draper. If the Sterling Cooper impresario of Mad Men were running this campaign, he wouldn’t bother talking about low premiums or subsidies. That's too mundane. “Draper realizes that people don’t want to be sold a product. They want to be sold a vision of themselves that they like.”

Americans want to think of themselves as hard-working and self-reliant, and they like to make fun of the government. So sell them reform as a matter of national pride. Make them feel like the take-charge generation fixing the system. Obama will also need to make reform seem cool—because brand, as Draper knows, matters more than particulars. Obama should try something like a Mac vs. PC ad to make the status quo seem outdated and uncool.

Draper can't believe how poorly health care reform is being sold.
Draper can't believe how poorly health care reform is being sold.   (AP Photo/AMC, Craig Blankenhorn)
In this publicity image released by AMC, Jon Hamm portrays Don Draper in the AMC series, Mad Men.
In this publicity image released by AMC, Jon Hamm portrays Don Draper in the AMC series, "Mad Men."   (AP Photo/AMC)
This photo released by AMC shows Jon Hamm as Don Draper in Mad Men.
This photo released by AMC shows Jon Hamm as Don Draper in "Mad Men."   (AP Photo/AMC Frank Ockenfels)
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COMMENTS
Showing 3 of 4 comments
pg13
Aug 31, 2009 5:48 AM CDT
All the anti-change people shut up when I ask if they think their insurance company will drop them as soon as they (or their kids) get sick.
Spudsy
Aug 30, 2009 5:17 AM CDT
Having been in the business for over twenty years, any successful adman in damn close to be a sociopath.
brawne
Aug 30, 2009 2:05 AM CDT
Hey, how do you think you got healthcare for- profit corporations in the first place? I was there--Nashville, country music and the Frists. They invented it and it is the home of every jillion-dollar building the same way that credit card companies have a home too. I think it is called Delaware. The Frists were the first doctors to see your tumor as money in their bank account. The fact that no doctor did that before them is just cause one had to be first. We the great individualists that we are could have stopped all this in the fifties. But we were no more gonna tell a doctor what to do than tell you that your church couldn't be tax free. This is all part of the 35 year fodder to get us to accept that people are people. If we'd been more government in the 50's we'd a regulated it then. As it was we let the doctors do it cause we thought that they had some big humanitarian streak that we don't expect in an engineer. I think it is called being fooled twice. Cause the doctors got ate by the same thing eating us As for Don Draper--I love Mad Men, but I never forget that he's a sociopath..

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