The shelf we keep for the evening.
Explore Movies about advertising
Films and series about advertising, persuasion, brands and the people who sell them. Year, director and what each one is really about.
Thank You for Smoking (2005)
Jason Reitman's satire follows a tobacco lobbyist who can argue any side of any question. It is a film about spin, about the gap between persuasion and truth, and about what happens to a person who is very good at the first and indifferent to the second.
The Founder (2016)
Ray Kroc turns a single hamburger stand in San Bernardino into McDonald's. The product was the brothers'. The system was theirs too. The brand, the real estate and the name became his. It is the best film ever made about what a brand actually is, and it is not a flattering answer.
Art & Copy (2009)
Doug Pray's documentary on the creative revolution in American advertising, with Lee Clow, George Lois, Mary Wells Lawrence, Hal Riney and others talking about the work that defined the trade. It is the most affectionate film on this list and the least critical.
The Greatest Movie Ever Sold (2011)
Morgan Spurlock makes a documentary about product placement, funded entirely by product placement, and films himself selling the sponsorships. The premise is a gimmick and the footage of the actual sales meetings is the most honest thing ever recorded about how brand partnerships are negotiated.
The Century of the Self (2002)
Adam Curtis's four-part BBC documentary on how Freud's ideas about the unconscious were taken up by business and government to manage the public. The most useful thing on this list, and the only one that is really about marketing rather than about advertising people.
How to Get Ahead in Advertising (1989)
Bruce Robinson's film in which an advertising executive, unable to write a campaign for a spot cream, has a breakdown and grows a talking boil on his neck that argues for the industry he has come to hate. It is the only genuinely angry comedy about advertising, and it is about what the work does to the person doing it.
The Joneses (2009)
A family moves into an affluent suburb and is admired for their taste, their possessions and their apparent ease. They are not a family. They are a unit of stealth marketers, placed to make their neighbours want what they have. The premise is better than the film, and the premise is worth an hour of anyone's attention.
Mad Men (2007 to 2015)
Matthew Weiner's series about a New York advertising agency in the 1960s. It is the most influential depiction of our trade ever made, it is extremely good, and it is a period drama that a surprising number of people in marketing have quietly absorbed as a documentary.
Putney Swope (1969)
Robert Downey Sr's satire in which the token Black executive at a New York advertising agency is accidentally elected chairman, fires almost everyone, renames the firm Truth and Soul, and refuses to take tobacco, alcohol or war toy accounts. It is the angriest film on this list and the most interesting.