Library party returns with ’60s advertising theme

Von Der Heyden will help host the Madmen and Madwomen Library Party Friday night. Organized by the Duke Marketing Club, the event is expected to be attended by local advertising executives and the Board of Trustees.
Von Der Heyden will help host the Madmen and Madwomen Library Party Friday night. Organized by the Duke Marketing Club, the event is expected to be attended by local advertising executives and the Board of Trustees.

Throw on that vintage wear and party with class tonight at the Madmen and Madwomen Library Party.

For one night, Perkins Library will transform into the advertising headquarters of Sterling, Cooper, Perkins and Bostock. Organized by Duke Marketing Club, the party’s theme centers around advertising in the 1960’s and is specifically based on the TV show Mad Men.

Tonight’s event marks the return of the semiformal event, which had been an annual event hosted by a different student group since 2007 but was cancelled last year due to funding and planning failures.

Led by senior Emma Donaho, a committee of 12 students from the Marketing Club began planning for the party in September 2010. The Marketing Club raised $50,000 for the event and is expecting about 2,000 people to attend, including local advertising executives and the Board of Trustees, according to George Grody, a visiting professor in markets and management studies and the faculty advisor for the student group.

“I don’t think there has ever been a bigger or better marketing campaign from any student event on campus,” Grody said.

This year, the party will take place across Perkins and Bostock libraries, said Aaron Welborn, director of communications for Duke University Libraries. Von der Heyden pavilion will be turned into a 1960s lounge, while the Link will become a motown club. Attendees can listen to live music, watch vintage TV commercials from AdViews—the library’s online digital collection of TV commercials from the 1950s to the 1980s—and peruse the blown-up vintage ads decorating the entire event from the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising and Marketing History.

“What we’re really trying to do is to make this the quintessential Duke party, where people have a lot of fun, but there’s [also] a smart part,” Grody explained.

The library party will not lack an educational component. The Marketing Club has also hosted three lectures on controversial issues prevalent in the 1960’s leading up to the party.

In addition, near the reference desk in Perkins, a big screen will be set up and play pertinent video footage of the decade, ranging from Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech and John F. Kennedy’s presidential inaugural address to atomic bomb scare commercials. Timelines of the early 1960s will also display events that characterized those years, such as the civil rights movement, women’s issues and the Vietnam War

“Really, the idea is that you’ll walk in to the party and you’ll be saturated with all these images from the time,” Welborn said. “It’ll say a lot about the history of advertising and marketing.”

Donaho said one of the party’s most interesting components is its unique setting, adding that it is not every day that university libraries throw open parties for students.

“It means something that we’re having [the party] in the library and using library materials,” she said.

Welborn added that the party’s contrast to Duke’s standard social culture was one of its major assets.

“I think this will be a nice counterpoint to the usual image people have of Duke’s party culture,” he said. “This is not a massive kegger... this is something that is for everyone, and it’s something that is educational, and it’s something that highlights the seriousness of Duke students but also the fact that you can have fun and learn at the same time.”

Discussion

Share and discuss “Library party returns with ’60s advertising theme” on social media.