How actor Jon Hamm works with brands and TV's mid-year review

In this week's Marketing Briefing...

Digiday caught up with actor Jon Hamm to hear about how he works with brands, how he decides what’s right for him as a pitchman and whether or not he’s seen the Zoomerified Don Draper meme.

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By Kristina Monllos

Some 15 years ago, in July 2007, Mad Men premiered on AMC and introduced audiences to creative director Don Draper played by Jon Hamm. Another now recognizable face also appeared in that pilot: Stephanie Courtney, the actress who plays Progressive’s pitchwoman Flo, played a switchboard operator in the show’s pilot.

The creative team for the insurance brand recently rolled out a new campaign featuring Hamm along with Courtney and used their history as a “wink and a nod,” according to Hamm. Digiday caught up with Hamm to hear about how he works with brands, how he decides what’s right for him as a pitchman and whether he’s seen the Zoomerified Don Draper meme.

How involved are you in the creative process to craft your ad persona for each brand? It seems like there are a few ads where you’re playing a heightened version of yourself.

Yeah, I like to have some sort of influence. I think I have a pretty good barometer to what’s funny as well as to what’s going to play and won’t be off-putting to a viewer. It’s all a fun-house version of me. You don’t want to lean too heavily on that. You don’t want to come across as vain. It’s better to come across as silly and in on the joke, having fun with it. Those are the ones I’ve been able to succeed with whether it’s the Apple commercial or this Progressive campaign or even ones I’ve done for H&R Block or Skip the Dishes up in Canada.

I have a decent amount of participation in the process without stepping on people’s toes while also allowing the agencies, who I know first-hand obviously how much work, effort, time and equity they put into things, how hard they work and how many lawyers have to vet it. It’s not lost on me how much work goes into [an ad campaign] so I’d never want to come in and blow it all up like, Oh this won’t work. There’s always a way to massage it to fit on me a little better. For the most part, agencies have been very receptive to input like that.

By Tim Peterson

Downturn, unfortunately, would be an appropriate description to summarize the first half of 2022 for the TV, streaming and digital video industry. Then again, upturn — or at least upheaval — would also apply.

While Netflix’s subscriber shedding signaled the streaming industry approaching a rough patch and TV advertising’s measurement shift has similarly slowed, Netflix’s and Disney+’s announced forays into the advertising market and Warner Bros. Discovery’s completed merger is turning up the competition. And then TikTok’s rollout of a revenue-sharing program and YouTube’s addition of ads to Shorts are upping the ante in the short-form video space. Then yet again, the economic downturn could introduce enough friction into the overall ad market as well as streaming services’ programming budgets to slow these upturns — or to turn the TV, streaming and digital video market into an all-out fight.

Streaming subs

Two years after the streaming surge, the subscriber free-for-all has ebbed a bit. In the case of Netflix, it has ebbed a lot. The dominant subscription-based streamer’s first-quarter subscriber loss and its forecast of an even larger loss in Q2 was the story in the industry in the first half of 2022.

However, Netflix’s competitors haven’t run into such rough ground in getting subscribers. Disney+, for example, accumulated more subscribers than analysts expected in Q1. Meanwhile, the completed merger of Discovery and Warner Bros. sets up for the combined company to combine its respective flagship streamers into an even more formidable competitor.

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