Veteran Canadian ‘Mad Man’ helping McMaster University build advertising archive

Well before the TV series Mad Men rekindled our fascination with the Madison Avenue-based advertising business, veteran Canadian ad man Terry O'Reilly was giving us an inside look via his CBC Radio series The Age of Persuasion.

The Age of Persuasion, which O'Reilly created with Mike Tennant, looked at classic ad campaigns and the people behind them. His new show, Under the Influence examines how advertising has shifted from a predominantly hard-sell approach to a more two-way conversation with consumers to influence their choices.

Not surprisingly, O'Reilly's work more often features the giants of Madison Avenue but he's also become involved in a movement assemble an archive of Canada's advertising legacy.

His office at his Toronto production company Pirate Radio features a musty bag full of cassette tapes and old radio commercials he acquired from an ad agency's creative director.

"You know that smell? That's the state of our advertising archives right now, in this country," O'Reilly told the Globe and Mail.

Much of the Canadian ad industry's heritage is gathering dust in hap-hazard collections held by individual executives because agencies have neither the time, resources nor space to create proper archives.

But that's changing. Pirate, which produces radio and TV commercials in Toronto and New York, has donated 50,000 pieces of advertising to McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont., creating what the Globe calls the largest industry archive in the world.

O'Reilly, who before co-founding Pirate in 1990 worked for major agencies such as Campbell-Ewald, Doyle Dane Bernbach and Chiat/Day, says he's kept much of his own work for historical and educational purposes.

The McMaster archive, which goes back to 1981, includes concept pitches, video and audio of casting sessions, sheet music and lyrics for jingles, and a wide swath of radio and TV commercials, the Globe reports.

"When it comes to discussing Canadiana in marketing, there's a lack of resources to work with," Mandeep Malik, a marketing professor with McMaster's DeGroote School of Business tells the Globe. "This particular legacy will create a rich resource which can start getting studied and developed."

Besides McMaster's project, ad industry veterans have also created the Canadian Advertising Museum online, an effort to build a web-based archive.

Pirate Toronto plans a second donation that will grow the McMaster collection to 75,000 items. Malik says they will be useful not only for the business school research but other disciplines.

"Advertising is the great mirror of our society," says O'Reilly. "It truly reflects what we're thinking at any given time, what we're wearing, trends. … It tracks and dates our species."

Both the Age of Persuasion and Under the Influence are available as streaming audio or podcasts.