Putney Swope (1969)

Trailer: Original 1969 theatrical trailer.

What it is

A low-budget independent film from 1969, shot largely in black and white with the commercials themselves in colour. Written and directed by Robert Downey Sr.

What it gets right about the trade

It is about who gets to make the work, which is a question the industry was not asking in 1969 and took another fifty years to take seriously. That alone makes it the most prescient film here.

The accidental election is a real mechanism. Swope wins because every board member votes for the person they assume nobody else will vote for. Anyone who has sat on a committee recognises it immediately, and it is a sharper piece of organisational observation than anything in Mad Men.

The commercials within the film are better than most real ones, which is the joke and also the argument. The new agency makes work that is funnier, stranger and more memorable than the industry it replaced.

What it gets wrong, or where it complicates itself

Swope’s principles erode. He keeps the war toy account by another name, the agency becomes what it displaced, and the film ends in something close to nihilism.

Whether that is honest or cynical is a real question. It can be read as the system being unchangeable, which is a convenient conclusion for anybody inside it. It can also be read as a warning about what happens when a reform depends on one person’s character rather than on a rule.

The film is also chaotic, uneven and very much of its moment. Some of it has aged badly and a viewer should expect that.

The one part worth showing a team

The board meeting where Swope is elected.

Four minutes, and it is the best depiction of how organisations make decisions nobody intended. Show it before any committee process in your own firm and watch people get uncomfortable.

If you run the company rather than the marketing

Two things in this film are about running an organisation rather than about advertising.

The first is the election. Decisions get made by committees in which everyone is voting tactically, assuming they know how others will vote, and the outcome is something no individual wanted. If your company makes significant decisions by group vote without anyone owning the recommendation, you are running the Swope mechanism and will eventually get a Swope result.

The second is what happens to his principles. He starts with a clear rule about which accounts he will not take, and the rule dissolves under commercial pressure, one justified exception at a time.

That is the normal failure mode for stated values, and the defence against it is not stronger conviction. It is writing the rule down specifically enough that an exception has to be argued openly, with somebody named as the person who approved it.