In a recent episode of Mad Men, Don Draper, the advertising creative genius, loses his cool with clients and throws Jantzen swimwear executives out of his office. The Jantzen executives and Don Draper don’t see eye to eye on the type of advertising campaign that will sell product and help the family-focused swimwear company edge out competitors in the bikini business. While Don Draper is convinced that his campaign is pure magic, the client is worried about being too edgy and provocative. This pretty much sums up an age old battle between clients and creative marketing agencies.

In consumer public relations, the same story unfolds on a regular basis as creative executives dream up innovative (and, yes, sometimes provocative) campaigns yet face resistance from clients who are understandably risk adverse. Internal public relations leaders and brand managers on the corporate side are generally focused on protecting the brand and eliminating risks while agency executives are challenged with differentiating their clients and achieving high profile media results. In today’s world of short attention spans and rapid fire social media, you’ve got to be novel and often unconventional to attract attention.

As a public relations leaders and visionaries, it is our responsibility to coach clients through new approaches and build their comfort levels especially in the unchartered territory of social media. The Mad Men era executives did not have to deal with social media and they certainly had a bit of an advantage as they boozed up the clients with cocktails day and night. Undoubtedly, some of the edgier campaign concepts would be easier to sell if all of our clients downed a couple Manhattans before the creative presentation.

In fact, that’s probably how many a past PR executive sold some very ill-fated ideas and underhanded PR stunts over the years. Unfortunately those stunts have given our industry a bad rap on occasion. In the same Mad Men episode, the young ambitious advertising executive Peggy stages a fight in a supermarket to promote a brand of ham for Thanksgiving. The media covers “a ham worth fighting for” and the client’s sales rocket. Of course, we are talking about a fictional television program but the truth is that those types of stunts did define the early generation of public relations. Today, successful PR is about authenticity and honesty. Consumers demand transparency and social media channels create a world where anything can be exposed within a matter of seconds.

While many of the challenges of client service are the same as they were in the 1960s, today’s generation of consumers are much more demanding of brands. They expect a certain level of personalized engagement and open, honest dialogue with the brands they purchase yet at the same time demand an intensified level of entertainment and excitement. Modern public relations executives face a new frontier that will be defined by the next era of groundbreaking campaigns and creativity. However, Don Draper’s meltdown reminds us all that great ideas are not enough. We must also have the patience and relationship skills to gently steer our clients in the right direction and the integrity to build their trust.

Those Don Draper moments of frustration will never be a thing of the past in the PR business. Passionate public relations execs will continue to invest their hearts and souls in campaigns that some clients just aren’t ready for yet. The trick is to remember that amazing ideas are only the tip of the iceberg. A martini or two along the way might also help in staving off a Draper-esque moment…