Twitter Used by Mad Men to Engage Audience
By Tom Chandler on Aug 22, 2008 in Engagement Marketing
UPDATE: I recently saw a post suggesting that all the Mad Men characters on Twitter aren’t part of the show - they’re simply fans. If it’s true, then the producers should probably kick themselves. If it’s not, the kudos for firing up more interest…
Hit TV show Mad Men is apparently using Twitter to communicate with its audience - in the voices of its leading characters.
You can read the whole story at American Copywriter, but here’s a tease:
For instance, last Sunday morning, well before the episode aired, @don_draper tweeted: “Wishing I didn’t have to spend most of my Sunday at the office.” It was later revealed in the show, of course, that Draper had to head into the city to work on the American Airlines pitch. Nice.
It’s a pretty example of engagement marketing via social network tools. Engaging with an audience is about tapping into shared values and passions, and nowhere is it written the people sharing those passions and values have to be real.
Keep writing, Tom Chandler.
This got me to thinking about the TV show lost. They don’t do Twitters (as far as I know) but they do often run Internet-based games to keep interest up during their 9-month hiatuses (hiati?) Although the games are not directly related to the storyline, they do hold true to the Lost universe, and provide a bit more of a background. Often they also have hints for what is coming in the next season.
The bonus thing for the show is that there are also fan-run sites like Lostpedia (as the name suggests, a Lost wiki). Apparently the show’s producers lurk these fan sites and even use them from time to time to announce hints and clues themselves.
Although they claim that they do not write the storyline based on what the fans ask for, I suspect it would be hard to read all the theories and *not* be influenced by them.
There is also one particular instance where the producers explicitly said they killed two characters shortly after they were introduced because the fan base hated them so much — which of course they learned through fan-based websites.
Either way, the Internet has influenced both the way viewers experience Lost, and how the creators make it. A great example (I think) of engagement marketing! Not to mention a great way of blending the two media together for a much different viewer experience…
~Graham
Graham Strong | Aug 23, 2008 | Reply
And what did Don use to Twitter with…his desk phone??? Perhaps a typed memo?
Melissa Elicker | Aug 23, 2008 | Reply
Probably the way-ahead-of-its-time Twitter Dicta-phone. Most don’t even know they existed.
Tom Chandler | Aug 23, 2008 | Reply