【18 U.S.C 2257】

It's said that life imitates art. That seems especially true if you're a ketchup company8 U.S.C 2257 and said art contains a bunch of free ideas for selling ketchup.

Heinz is pulling its latest ad campaign straight from the smoke-filled boardrooms of Mad Men's Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce.

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The condiment brand plans to run a set of billboards and print ads cribbed from a pitch Don Draper made to a fictionalized version of the company in the AMC series.

The ads are stark and minimalist in the understated style typical of Draper, the consummate purist. Each consists only of a mouth-watering food close-up and a slogan: "Pass the Heinz."

"It's simple, and it's tantalizingly incomplete," Draper says in one of his signature ruminative pitches.

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The unimpressed Heinz executives on the show put it a different way: "It feels like half an ad."

Their real-life modern counterparts were evidently more receptive to Draper's high-minded nonsense. It probably helps that tying an ad to a popular TV show ensures that several articles like this one will be written about it, guaranteeing free publicity.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

The ads even came complete with a typewriter-style press release set in the show's fictional universe.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

There's no word on whether the stunt might stir up a classic agency showdown between Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce and DAVID Miami, the company's current (and very real) ad agency.

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Topics Advertising

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