It’s funny when television mirrors reality so closely.

I was watching Mad Men, the AMC series about 1960’s-era advertising executives. The setup: A client, Playtex, craved a new advertising campaign. A group of men (who assumedly have never tried to squeeze their man-breasts into a push-up bra) and one woman was assigned to the campaign. The group (without the woman’s help) developed a campaign around the assumption that women wanted to either be like Marilyn Monroe or Jackie Kennedy, and all advertising should be centered on those two female icons.

Problem is, the men didn’t ask any women if they related to either Jackie or Marilyn. They didn’t ask the opinion of the lone woman working on the campaign. In fact, they even dismissed her opinion after she disagreed with their ideas. Just like what happens in hundreds of companies and ad agencies every day, the men of Mad Men ignored the real data in front of them, and chose to make assumptions about their target audience.