• by Daisy Whitney , Op-Ed Contributor, March 30, 2012

Mad Men is back and better than ever, according to its latest ratings. But is the ad business still like that? It can’t be, right? Or maybe it can. Maybe the ad business, like any business, has its share of crazy stories, wild sex, and bizarre pitch meetings.

After all, sometimes we just have to do a little dirty work to land clients. Like the time Magna Global’s Tim Spengler had to assist in a champion wire dachshund mating session (well, assist by picking up one of the dogs from the airport) the night before his pitch to Ernest Gallo, or the time Marino Pujalj, creative director at Biggs Gilmore, had to pitch a client in a strip bar only to have the presentation stabbed by a dancer’s six-inch stiletto heel, or when a Seiter & Miller creative director bopped a hedge fund manager on the head during a pitch session to get his attention. (The agency didn’t get the job.)

The videos that tell these stories are part of a series called “Advertising’s Greatest War Stories” and they’re courtesy of ad shop Seiter & Miller, which created the video tales for its YouTube Channel  on the occasion of the firm’s 20th birthday.

Seiter & Miller said it made the video series to rekindle the lost art of storytelling on Madison Avenue, and the agency will be shooting more videos in the coming weeks.

“Advertising people are perennially between a rock (clients) and a hard place (doing great work). This built-in conflict makes for a mother lode of wild, weird and wonderful stories. And it is this side of the business we seek to celebrate,” said Livingston Miller, president of Seiter & Miller Advertising.