Thursday, September 17, 2009

awards show recognizes campaign created by fans


Tonight, the first awards show for social media, the SAMMY awards, were hosted by Digiday at the W Hotel in New York. (Did you know there are five W Hotels in NY? I didn't. So naturally ended up at the wrong one.) Mad Men on Twitter was chosen as finalist for Best Twitter Branding Campaign and although we didn't take home the prize (congrats to Travelzoo) we are grateful to the judging panel (which included reps from Ogilvy and Razorfish) for their recognition. It's something of a milestone in marketing history. The first time an awards show has acknowledged the power of a campaign created completely by fans.


4 comments:

Unknown said...

Ah, missed it by *that much*. Congrats, ad broad!

California Girl said...

congrats on the recognition. I didn't realize this was a campaign. I thought it was a blog exercise in faux marketing. No really!

I enjoy your blog and your news and I'm sure we'd get along like a house on fire if we ever met just iin telling stories. Everyone I worked with nationally in NY is now retired, out of the biz or dead.

Cheers!

Anonymous said...

Great article to analyze:

http://twittercism.com/delete-trending-topics/

What does it mean for someone like @bettydraper ?

“The first page of anything that is ranked by popularity is not necessarily indicative of the most important or best things in any given (overall) list. The best albums, books and movies don’t always make the top ten. Sometimes, perhaps more often than not, the really good stuff is just a little outside.”

Ad Broad, oldest working writer in advertising said...

@Jake P Thanks! I prefer to look at it as coming closer than we ever expected! ;)

@California Girl Thanks. I'm sure I'd enjoy meeting you too! I do think the marketing is real; a surprising number of people have posted they've started to watch the show because of the tweets. The only thing "faux" is that tweeters weren't hired by AMCs marketing department. Which is another example of how social media is changing the rules, isn't it? Brands win these days by encouraging fans to participate in telling the story. Mad Men characters aren't only avid fans, some of them are experienced marketers. Which is why the characters don't just tweet back and forth to each other, they stage twittertainment experiments in increasing involvement, like virtual parties or the "Mad World" production timed as a teaser to the premiere. http://adbroad.blogspot.com/2009/08/dispatch-from-twittertainment-frontier.html

@Anonymous Hmmmm....I don't think I mentioned @BettyDraper's follower count, did I? But you're right to point out that a high follower count doesn't guarantee quality. Except in rare cases (like the genius @shitmydadsays) follower count is usually reflective of both quality of content and the time and energy devoted to building up base.