$3 for 3 months. Save 90%.
$3 for 3 months. Save 90%.

Real Coca-Cola ad writer a racehorse breeder

Jonathan Lintner
Jon Hamm arrives at the Live Read And Series Finale Of "Mad Men" held at The Theatre at Ace Hotel on Sunday, May 17, 2015, in Los Angeles.

Joan established her production company, Peggy, newly in love, typed feverishly, and Don simply cracked a smile as Sunday's "Mad Men" finale came to an end.

Who wrote Coca-Cola's famous "Hilltop" ad, the 1971 McCann-Erickson ad that capped the show's run?

None of the above. Bill Backer, following his career as McCann's creative director for Coke, is no longer an ad man, though. He's a thoroughbred breeder who still leans on his background.

Backer's Smitten Farm operates out of The Plains, Va., and has produced a number of stakes winners with his simple strategy.

Now well past 80 years old, Backer continues to breed mares who raced hardest for him and sell off the promising colts. Backer's most well-known homebred is, perhaps, Snit. She won the 1997 Cotillion Handicap, now known as the Cotillion Stakes, a race that added to 2014 Kentucky Oaks winner Untapable's champion 3-year-old filly campaign.

"The good ones stay sound...and hopefully help pay for the others," Backer told the Thoroughbred Racing Radio Network in a 2012 interview, one in which he compared Mad Men to racing.

So, is the show accurate in its portrayals of his business?

"Yes. It's basically true," Backer told TRRN. "It has to way over-play and over-exaggerate its characters to make drama, as (HBO TV series) 'Luck' does. If you believe 'Luck,' you'd think everybody in racing was kind of a degenerate in some way or another. That over-plays the character, but basically, it's not lying about its segment of the business as Man Men is lying at all."

Backer told host Steve Byck he believes solutions to saving horse racing start with increasing purses "by 25 percent, minimum," to allow more prosperity for more trainers and owners. At the same time, he said, the business should do more to serve its customer base.

That person isn't the breeder, trainer or owner, he insists.

"The guy who wagers is the customer," Backer said. "I don't think we kind of make enough of a hero out of our customer. That's the person who pays for the oats and the hay.

"Those people -- it's just like buying's one product out there, and the tracks have to get together and realize the growth is off track in a lot of areas. It's one product. If they can't find a good race to bet at Delaware Park, they'll bet it at Aqueduct. If they can't find it anywhere, they'll go play poker, I guess."