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JANE Maas, one of the female pioneers of the advertising industry on New York’s Madison Avenue, is happy to be compared to Peggy Olson, the character from Mad Men, the 1960s-based American TV series about advertising, sex, booze and chain-smoking.

Maas, 81, the author of advertising memoir, Mad Women, was in Cork recently as the keynote speaker at Network Ireland’s celebration of International Women’s Day.

Maas — petite, charming and unpretentious — is, says Olson, “a hard-working woman who did what most women in advertising had to do in the 1960s. She started as a secretary and worked her way up.” This involved begging to copywrite, at night and at weekends, for no extra pay. She was finally promoted to copywriter.