In the critical hit program Mad Men, Bert Cooper, one of the founders of the show’s fictional ad agency, Sterling Cooper, recommends that the show’s antihero, Don Draper, read Ayn Rand’s 1,000-plus page tome Atlas Shrugged. “You are a productive and reasonable man and in the end, completely self-interested,” said Cooper by way of explanation.

While critics have made a sport of spotting rare anachronisms and unlikely incidents in the rigorously researched program, the Ayn Rand connection appears to be plausible. Today, Rand may not have the influence of, say, David Ogilvy on today’s advertising thinkers, but she does have her proselytizers.

For instance, when Tor Myhren started his job as chief creative officer of Grey, New York, two years ago, he gave out 120 copies of Rand’s The Fountainhead to the agency’s creative department. Kevin O’Connor, the former CEO of DoubleClick (since absorbed by Google) is such a Rand fan that he named his second son, Kian Rand, after her. Now the head of investment firm O’Connor Ventures, O’Connor said he is a follower of Rand’s “more than ever. It’s our political situation. This is the kind of economy that Ayn Rand fled from.” (Rand came to the U.S. from the then-Soviet Union when she was 21.)

O’Connor said he has met few Rand followers in the ad industry. He did, however, recall a dot-com era firm called Galt Advertising (after Atlas hero John Galt). O’Connor shrugged off recent criticism that Rand’s philosophy, which puts a strong emphasis on self-reliance and views philanthropy as a needless indulgence, is primarily of appeal to undergrads who haven’t thought it through. “I’ve never met anyone who was an Ayn Rand fan who no longer is one,” he said. “If anything, I tend to see it as a phase when you read Marxism in college.”

For the uninitiated, Ayn Rand developed a philosophy called objectivism, which embraces reason combined with individual liberty and laissez-faire politics. The goal of life, Rand believed, is full creative expression of an uncompromising vision. With a new Rand biography making the rounds, talk of a Hollywood adaptation of Atlas Shrugged and increased government intervention drawing comparison to that book’s events, several critics have taken aim at objectivism as a Nietzschean world view that lacks compassion and turns readers into elitists. 

Rand also gets less respect in academia than in the business world. “I don’t think the term ‘contempt’ is too strong to describe at least a significant part of the academic impression of Rand’s philosophy,” said Phil Hopkins, associate professor of philosophy at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas. “She has only a vague sense of the history of philosophy and no real grasp of the central issues or problems.”



Nevertheless, many who read Rand cite a lasting influence. Myhren read The Fountainhead well after college. “I was in my second year of advertising and it blew me away and made me very depressed,” he said, adding that he found the breach-no-compromises ethic of that book’s hero, Howard Roark, hard to duplicate in real life. “In advertising, to be totally pure to her vision is impossible.” Still, Myhren cited Rand as a “massive influence on how I approach the business.”

Though canvassing some of the top ad  agencies revealed relatively few Rand followers (“I was one in high school,” said Droga5 CEO Andrew Essex in a typical response), a few are self-professed followers.  Raleigh Felton, an art director at McKinney, for instance, says he long ago internalized Rand’s philosophy. “It fits in strongly with my work ethic and the importance of being productive,” he said. “Doing the best work possible for myself will allow my employer  to become more productive, which will make each of our clients more viable. It will eventually allow for the consumer/individual to have a better product or experience which can change their life and ultimately make the world grow and become a better place.”

Another devotee, Rene Huey-Lipton, vp and group planning director of GSD&M Idea City, has a bunch of Rand quotes in her office, among them “Wealth is the product of man’s capacity to think.” Huey-Lipton said Rand’s influence has helped her look at her profession in a positive light. “Especially early on in your career you think of advertising as one step above car salesman,” she said, “and I think about radical individualism and unfettered capitalism and we’re giving people the right to choose. You’re just providing a message to make that choice.”

Speaking of choice, Myhren said that his distribution of The Fountainhead at Grey has so far failed to turn the department into advocates. “Truth be told, it’s a very long book, so I think a lot didn’t read it,” Myhren said. “In some cases a month later or a year later they’d come back and say, ‘I read the book and it’s really, really inspirational.’ At least it helped people understand where my head is at.”