Pete Campbell does not have a good poker face. So in this week’s Mad Men, when he hears the dollar figures involved with Sterling Cooper & Partners’ potential sale of a majority stake to McCann Erickson, he can’t help smiling. It’s the beaming grin of the newly wealthy. As Pete notes with glee in the partners meeting, he has a 10-percent share in Sterling Cooper, and that will entitle him to a $3 million payout if and when the sale goes through.
While $3 million may not sound like much—no, wait, $3 million does sound like much. But it sounds like even more much when you convert it to 2014 dollars. One Reddit contributor who goes by the Mad Men-appropriate handle I_Am_Intoxicated has run the numbers for all the partners in this deal, using the U.S. Department Of Labor’s inflation calculator to approximate equivalent payouts if the big ad-industry merger took place today. So now you know: That’s Pete Campbell’s $21-million smile. [via Uproxx]
