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Helping my recovering from knee surgery this week has been my belated discovery of Mad Men. I’m finding it a bit hard to describe how good this show is. It’s deep storylines, engaging characters and the way it’s packed with nuance and subtlety make it addictive. As a period piece alone it’s fascinating. Not to mention the advertising angle which I’m completely biased to.
For me it’s somewhere in the vicinity of Sopranos and could potentially flirt with The Wire status depending on the next few seasons.
Adding to the intrigue (and relevancy) of the show is it’s online presence, particularly on Twitter. So the story goes, fans setup Twitter accounts posing as the main characters – answering people’s questions and their TV counterparts would. In typical fashion, AMC freaks out and has them shut down. They’re finally convinced by their online agency to leave them up as they’re only helping interest in the show and not doing any damage.
So check out (even better talk with) the cast of Mad Men: Don, Roger, Pete, Peggy, Betty, and Joan.
There’s also this great site: WeAreSterlingCooper. Setup by fans of the show, they describe the site as “a rallying cry to brands and fans alike to come together and create together:”
Even more provocative is the site’s opening salvo:
Fan fiction. Brand hijacking. Copyright misuse. Sheer devotion. Call it what you will, but we call it the blurred line between content creators and content consumers, and it’s not going away. We’re your biggest fans, your die-hard proponents, and when your show gets canceled we’ll be among the first to pass around the petition. Talk to us. Befriend us. Engage us. But please, don’t treat us like criminals
This is awesome. There are lots of ways for brands to connect with they most loyal consumers to put them to work for you but this kind of unsolicited loyalty from web-savvy, socially-networked fans is a gold mine.
I’m not sure what type of web presence they envisioned for this show set in 1960, but as it happens in this ‘era of the baton‘, people have remixed and passed on their interpretations of the content. Hopefully AMC realizes the value of what they have here.
