In case you missed it, Koss headphones were featured on Sunday night’s two-hour premiere of the Emmy-Award winning show, “Mad Men.”
After an insensitive comedic routine on the Tonight Show, Peggy Olson (played brilliantly by Elisabeth Moss) is forced to redo Koss’ Superbowl ad without the help of her new boss, Ted Chaough (Olson no longer works for Don Draper, played by Jon Hamm).
Olson works tirelessly throughout the episode (even on New Year’s Eve) to solve the problem. Her solution is to use B-roll footage from the commercial shoot with a voice-over saying: “Koss Headphones – sound so sharp and clear, you can see it.”
The original idea, “Lend Us Your Ears,” is a fictitious ad created by the writers of Mad Men who do an excellent job with their research (at the time, Koss was one of the only headphone manufacturers in the world).
On the show, the ad was scheduled to run during the 1968 Superbowl (which featured our team of choice, the Green Bay Packers). In reality, we have never run a TV ad during the big game. AdAge.com writer Matt Creamer wrote that a 30-second ad during this game would have cost about $50,000 (http://adage.com/article/media/mad-men-premiere-recap-blue-hawaii/240741).
This is not the first time Koss headphones have been featured on Mad Men. Last season Pete Campbell (played by Vincent Kartheiser), frequently wore the signature Koss Pro4A headphones as an escape from the rigors of the advertising world (http://tinyurl.com/d26zn7z).
We look forward to seeing what the writers have in store for the rest of the season.
In honor of our part on the show, we will be running a headphone give-away for the rest of the month on our Facebook page (http://ow.ly/jQQuI). Each headphone will come with a one-of-a-kind Koss Stereophone print, autographed by the inventor of the World’s First SP/3 Stereophone, John C. Koss.
*For non-Facebook users please visit http://ow.ly/jPDrE for the headphone give-away.
Michael J. Koss is the president and chief executive officer of Milwaukee-based Koss Corp. and son of John C. Koss, inventor of the first stereophone.
