Meet the real 'Mad Men'

    In honor of the debut of the third season of 'Mad Men' on AMC, Fortune looks back at the real life ad giants who defined their decades and swayed the masses.

    By Alyssa Abkowitz

    F. Wayland Ayer

    With $250, the Philadelphian founded the first U.S. ad agency, N.W. Ayer & Son (named after his father), in 1869.

    He changed the business by implementing the open contract, which allowed an agency to work exclusively for a client. Before that, ad firms bought space in a magazine or newspaper for the cheapest price possible and then marked up the price to sell to advertisers.

    Ayer's company went on to create some of the world's best-known slogans, including "When it rains, it pours" for Morton Salt in 1912, "I'd walk a mile for a Camel" in 1921, and "A Diamond is Forever" for DeBeers in 1948.

    James Walter Thompson

    Thompson started as a bookkeeper at Carlton & Smith and then bought the firm in 1878 for $500 (and the office furniture for $800).

    He renamed it J. Walter Thompson Co., invented the account executive position to offer full service to clients and was the first to use house ads to promote the agency.

    The firm, which became the first agency to surpass $100 million in billings in 1947, helped launch Proctor & Gamble's Crisco and developed the Rock of Gibraltar concept for Prudential Insurance Co.

    John E. Powers

    Often considered the father of creative ads, Powers -- a former publisher of The Nation -- was hired as the first full-time ad copywriter by department store owner John Wanamaker in 1880.

    Powers quickly became one of the most expensive copywriters, known for writing ads that were honest, simple and straightforward. His approach to advertising: Get the reader's attention. Famously he once said, "If the truth isn't tellable fix it so it is."

    Leo Burnett

    In the early 1950s, Philip Morris (now Altria) wanted to transform the image of its Malboro brand filtered cigarettes, which had been advertised as women's smokes since 1924.

    Phillip Morris hired Burnett, a former reporter who started his own Chicago agency in 1935, to take on the task of giving Marlboro a rough and tough image. And what could be more masculine than a cowboy?

    Apparently, America agreed. In 1955, the year the Marlboro Man campaign debuted, sales of Malboro hit $5 billion -- a 3,241% increase over 1954's sales.

    Bill Bernbach

    Bernbach was one of the founders of Doyle Dane Bernbach (now part of Omnicom Group), the first ad agency to introduce the creative form approach, which paired a copywriter with an art director.

    In the past, writers handed the copy off to an art director, who then created a layout. By working together from the beginning, ads became subtle, yet bolder, as seen in DDB's 1959 "Think Small" campaign for Volkswagen.

    The proof Bernbach was a legendary act? He and his firm are mentioned in "Mad Men" as a rival to Sterling Cooper, Don Draper's agency.

    Mary Wells

    Even though many Mad Men-esque ad agencies were filled with testosterone, not all fabulous ad makers were men.

    In 1966, Wells became the first woman to head a major agency, Wells Rich and Greene, and earned the honor of being the first female CEO of a company listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

    In her 2002 memoir she wrote, "I began to theatricalize what I sold." As a result, her agency created memorable jingles, such as Alka-Seltzer's "Plop, Plop, Fizz, Fizz" and Ford's "Quality is Job One."

    In 1990, she sold Wells Rich and Greene for $160 million to a French company that eventually closed the firm.