Mad About Twitter
Want to know my favorite Twitter discovery of late? All my favorite characters from "Mad Men"have Twitter accounts. Peggy Olson, Betty and Don Draper, Roger Sterling and even wanna-be novelist Ken Cosgrove can be found online tweeting about advertising, household chores, saucy new secretaries and all other aspects of the fictional 1960s world they inhabit.
Here's where the story gets more interesting: the characters are maintained by fans of the show, not AMC (the network that airs Mad Men), and have been since the day they started. Apparently the twitterers were kept under wraps until last week when Carri Bugbee, the woman behind "@Peggyolson" revealed her identity at the Shorty Awards, a new event honoring the most popular Twitter content producers.
It's a little murky, but it doesn't appear that AMC was particularly thrilled with the Mad Men Twitter accounts in the beginning. According to the Wall Street Journal and a recent article in The Oregonian, Bugbee claims her Twitter account was briefly suspended due to "suspicious activity" early on, but was quickly reinstated. Now AMC publicly states they're thrilled with the way fans have embraced the Mad Men twitterers, and they should be - @Peggyolson has more than 11,000 followers, including me.
From a marketing perspective, I think the implications of this are fairly extraordinary. By relinquishing control of the Mad Men characters and enabling fans to give them life outside the boundary of the show, they've most likely saved a substantial amount of money in marketing dollars (a creative agency would probably charge a hefty fee to create a similar program) and given a healthy boost to the show's audience. Perhaps most importantly, by enabling the Mad Men characters to evolve outside of the constraints of the show, they're inviting fans like me to form a deeper bond to the show itself. Instead of forgetting about Mad Men between seasons, now I can't wait for it to come back. And AMC can be sure that @Peggyolson will remain true to the TV character, because if she doesn't, she'll have 11,000 angry fans to answer to.
Of course, there are only so many similarities one can draw between marketing opportunities for a TV show and other types of businesses, but regardless, I think the lesson remains the same - by relinquishing a little bit of control, you just might get more in return than you ever hoped for.
