Don has been struggling for weeks to come up with a new idea for Lucky Strike.

Finally, Don has to deliver. But in his meeting with his Lucky Strike clients, Don’s doom deepens as they complain about U.S. regulators.

“Might as well be living in Russia,” says Lee Garner, Jr., the son of the company’s chairman.

“Damn straight,” his father says, as the smoky table breaks out in coughs.

Roger Sterling, the Mad Men’s silver-tongued front man, expresses concern for their plight. “Through manipulation of the media,” he says, people have a “misguided impression” that cigarettes cause death.

But that only angers the clients.

“Manipulation of the media? Hell, that’s what I pay you for!”

Not ready to make his presentation, Don stares at his notes.

Pete Campbell, the accounts manager who fears any unscripted moment, jumps in. He repeats a marketing consultant’s idea about making the “death wish” the driving idea of a campaign. “So what if cigarettes are dangerous,” he says. “You’re a man!”

That only enrages Lee Garner, the head of the company.

“Is that your slogan: ‘You’re going to die anyway, die with us?’ … Are you insane?”

The Lucky Strike clients begin to leave. Then, after a long silence, Don speaks.

The government’s ban on health claims, he says, might be a blessing, he says. It means that none of Lucky Strike’s competitors can make those bogus claims either.

The feds have cleared away all the confusing claims of cigarette manufacturers. Health claims, in fact, invite debate—they remind people of all the reports about cancer, emphysema, heart disease. Now, with the health claims gone, so are the reminders of tobacco’s deadly properties.

“This is the greatest advertising opportunity since the invention of cereal,” Don says.

A clever company—and its clever ad firm—can now grab market share with a clever campaign.

Don leaps up to the easel. He starts asking questions. How do you make Lucky Strikes?

Garner is unimpressed, but his anger has disappeared.

“We breed insect-repellant tobacco seeds,” he says, “plant them in the North Carolina sunshine, grow it, cut it, toast it—“

Don has what he needs.

He writes the following on the board:

LUCKY STRIKE. IT’S TOASTED.

Silence takes over the room. First incomprehension. Then recognition. Then excitement.

“It’s toasted.” That’s a fact. It contains no health claim. And yet it sounds so healthy, so natural.

The perfect end run around the whole controversy.

Tip: When the Truth Is Ugly, Reframe

People who face uncomfortable truths have two choices: They can face the issue directly or devise strategies of avoidance.

To face any issue directly, we need to be “mindful.” That is, we need to consider, openly, to all of the issues, concerns, fears, and conflicts of the matter at hand.

At the core of honesty/mindfulness is acceptance of even the scariest, most uncomfortable truths of life. Jon Kabat-Zinn, one of the great teachers of mindfulness, says: “Mindfulness practice is really a love affair with what we might call truth …how things actually are, all embedded here in this very moment.”

So that’s one approach. The other approach is avoidance.

Avoidance is the opposite of a love affair with truth. It’s a fear or even hatred of truth. It’s a desire to deny and squelch all information that might challenge a difficult habit or idea. Here’s how a psychologist named Trish Bartley describes avoidance:

 Avoidance is an almost universal response to painful experience. It is part of the behavioral repertoire available in the face of danger, where the body is physiologically primed to get into fight, flight, or freeze mode. Avoidance may be conscious or more automatic, and can operate at the level of cognition (deliberately not thinking about aspects of the diagnosis), behavior (avoiding situations that remind you of cancer), or affect (distracting oneself from negative emotions. At its extreme end, avoidance can become denial.…

Avoidance happens either directly or indirectly. Direct avoidance entails denying or swatting away the truth. Indirect avoidance entails simply pretending the truth doesn’t exist.

Most persuasion entails aspects of both truth and avoidance of truth. The most moral persuasion offers the audience information and insights that allow people to make the best decisions.

But self-interested persuasion—the approach that Don Draper is devising for his clients at Lucky Strike—is largely an exercise in avoidance.

That tobacco industry’s avoidance once took the form of outright lies, claiming that tobacco actually enhanced health. At other times it focused on the taste and physical pleasures, and at other times the social benefits. When health dangers arose, tobacco companies introduced innovations—like the filter tip and low-tar and low-nicotine brands—that promised (falsely) to provide a safer smoking experience.

Now, with the “toasted” campaign, Don simply changes the subject. “Toasted” sounds wholesome and natural. It doesn’t deny the health risks of smoking. But it gives the smoker an opportunity to avoid thinking about them.