my novel goes on sale today

I'll admit, when I started writing a book (um, ten years ago?!) I had no idea how difficult it would be, nor how many people would need to become involved in the making of it. I guess I'd thought a novel would be sort of like writing a veeerrrrry looooonnnnng commercial or print ad. And indeed, my first draft probably read like that. The agent I sent my first draft to mailed it back with a few kind words and also (kind) harsh ones, "A novel needs to tell a story. Yours doesn't." Back to the drawing board--er, keyboard--after some crying and gnashing of teeth. The next draft came a few years later (I was also, you know, writing for actual pay) until I had piles and piles of scenes and plotlines and my husband (tired of carrying the piles out to the car when we went upstate on weekends) suggested I devote a summer to finishing the novel, just to get it out of my system. And now, thanks to the interventions of him and a few others (which I'll save for more posts) I have a novel coming out today from Simon & Schuster. It's called Making It: A Novel of Madison Avenue. A story set in (where else?) Adland from the POVof an older, wiser, married Peggy Olson. (The book is not affiliated with AMC's Mad Men, need I say?) Feeling morose on a Monday? Cheer up by doing an adbroad a solid. Buy the book here. Each sale improves my ranking on Amazon by at least a thousand. Thanks!

the twepisode: what TV can't show, takes place on twitter

If you're a Mad Men fan, you may have been disappointed to realize we weren't going to see Don take Sally to the Beatles. It was a pretty sure bet that even Matt Weiner couldn't have resurrected Shea Stadium or put the call out for 55,000 extras. So for fun and education, we took it to the twitterverse this weekend. We created a hashtag #mmbeatles to make tweets easy to follow. And linked tweets to vintage photos and footage to provide a visual dimension. We set up an account for Shea (@Shea1965) to be the spokes-stadium. Momentum was added by other tweeters who got into the act, including Mad Men on Twitter new to this season, like, um, Don's liver. It's the first time a historical event was live-tweeted by fictional characters.

Here's a moviola of excerpts, with linked images and video. Check out the full stream while it's still up at #mmbeatles. Thanks to twitter Maddicts who participated, whose improv talent made it happen.

I launched this crazy experiment not only because I'm a Mad Men fan addict, but because I'm fascinated by the current proliferation of new ways and places to extend and dimensionalize story. Perhaps there's potential for television shows to increase viewer involvment by "staging" unfilmed scenes on twitter. Could we have stumbled upon a new form of entertainment? In which what television can't show is played out on twitter? The twepisode. Stay twuned.

good housekeeping brings down the house at city center

When I was growing up, reading Good Housekeeping was a source of titillation to me because my mother had declared it off-limits to kids. (Presumably not for its recipes, but because of its frank advice on marriage and other womanly topics that these days are included in lower school curriculums.)

Because of this, and also because I've been a longtime cheerleader of women making their mark (in prehistoric 90s, I helped launch the first Take Our Daughters to Work Day) I was gratified that @BettyDraper and I had the chance to attend Good Housekeeping's 125th anniversary celebration at City Center where glitterati gathered last night for "Shine On: Celebrating 125 Years of Women Making Their Mark", a benefit to build the first National Women's History Museum.

On stage, Meryl Streep channeled Susan B. Anthony; Marlee Matlin delivered a tribute to Helen Keller in sign language; Fran Drescher stole the show with her grab bag of impersonations, including a human rights worker from India, a young Latina with stage-fright, and a Jewish grandmother to whom a desktop is "a place to put your napkin." The program included songs, performances and video tributes from Jessica Simpson, Jane Alexander, Kristen Bell, Candice Bergen, Hilary Duff, Nora Ephron, Marlo Thomas, Martha Stewart, Ann Hampton Calloway and wrapped with a rousing rendition of "Respect" from Aretha Franklin who received a standing ovation for belting it out while floating across stage in what appeared to be a gown of white feathers.

The show was actually branded entertainment, sponsored by Maybelline which donated $50K to the cause and did a bit of sampling while offering free makeup touches to the incoming audience. The one-night production honored women from all walks: from oft-lauded names like Sally Ride and Margaret Mead to lesser knowns like Joan Ganz Cooney (founder Children's TV Workshop) and Virginia Apgar (neonatologist) to names I'd never heard of, pointing up to me the need for a commemorative museum.

Perhaps as a sign of recessionary times, no party bags, natch, just giveaways of the latest issue which honors 125 women in a special section sponsored by Maybelline. (A choice of two covers. One featuring a headshot of Michele Obama so enthusiastically photoshopped that it has evoked a bit of foam in the twitstream.)

Branded efforts for a publication across multiple platforms might seem like a post-millennial concept but, as Stuart Elliott reminded recently, it harkens back to the 1970s, when Fortune magazine hired the cabaret act Weeden, Finkle & Fay to write and perform travelling shows to generate goodwill for its advertisers⎯and additional ad pages.

Showtime breaks barrier in twittertainment

Showtime is doing what renegade Mad Men on Twitter could only dream of: pushing television into another dimension by having characters officially live tweet from screen. When hospital series "Nurse Jackie" returns for its second season next month, Dr. Cooper will be sending out thoughts, observations, even photos in tweets that post in real-time as the show unfolds. (Unfortunately for MST and PST fans, tweets will be timed to East Coast viewings.)

This isn't the first time that characters have tweeted from fictional worlds, of course. Fans of Mad Men ignited the movement to extend television to twitter by launching accounts for characters and have been tweeting unofficially, sometimes during episodes, since August 2008. (In a particularly meta-moment the actor behind Trudy tweeted that her 1960s character had discovered twitter before she did.) Last summer, the Broadway play "Next to Normal" had characters (ostensibly) tweet during pauses in onstage dialogue, as a marketing ploy which proved extremely successful. More and more TV shows--Trueblood, Heroes, Glee, The Good Wife-- have established official twitter feeds, some in the voice of characters, but tweets exist parallel to shows, not incorporated into them. Interestingly, The Good Wife did an episode that revolved around twitter, but the twitter feed involved wasn't from a character, and subsequent postings have been sporadic.

“We want the story to extend beyond the hour that it lives on air," Robert Hayes, Showtime’s GM for digital media told NY Times reporter Brian Stelter. No doubt, Hayes has tuned in to the fact that 1/3 men and 1/4 women viewers multitask regularly by watching TV while using the Web.

But how far will he go to extend the story? Will he be the first to officially recognize the potential that twitter represents in extending a drama? Providing platform for not only extending the story as written, but expanding plots and subplots, creating parallel dramas contiguous with story, developing characters in ways they can't be developed on screen, even testing out new characters with a twitter "focus group" audience?

The @DoctorCoop account is already live, giving writers a chance to develop a twitter voice for him, the hardest thing to achieve when setting up an account for a character.

Why isn't there a feed for Nurse Jackie, I wonder? @Nurse_Jackie and @NurseJackie are live accounts, with no posts. Perhaps they're building the twitter cast slowly. The fun (and success) of @DoctorCoop will be watching him interact in real-time not only with followers (ahem, more of this, please) but with fellow cast members.

Or, perhaps the project is on hold as they trawl for writers well-versed in the medium. If so, let them know @BettyDraper is available ;)

@BettyDraper packing her hatbox for SXSW

Thanks to you who kindly voted on this proposed panel last Fall, I'm on my way to Austin where @BettyDraper will be presenting a session on Brand Fiction: what the heck is it? What can it do for your brand? How to integrate it into current marketing efforts? It's been recommended as a top SXSW panel for business and highlighted in SXSWorld and by the sharp folks at Razorfish. If you're putting your SXSW schedule together, hope you'll consider joining @Roger_Sterling (Michael Bissell) and me at 3:30 on Saturday for "Rules of Brand Fiction from Twittering Mad Men." A little fun before happy hour!

why i'm voting against @Adbroad in the Shorty Awards

If you've got other things on your mind besides social media, you might not have heard of the Shorty Awards. The Oscars of Twitter. Sans limos and red carpet and televised gala. Election is by popular vote and I'm jazzed to be a finalist in two categories: advertising and innovation.

The first round of voting was last week and there was a bit of a dust-up in advertising, the rare ad awards show in which Lee Clow isn't a frontrunner. @FrankAdman (a fictional art director from the 60s) accused @iwearyourshirt (a guy who wears other people's Tshirts for a living) of breaking the rules by getting robots to finagle votes. Turns out, boosting vote counts via robots (or humans in feverish imitation of them) isn't against the rules. But Shorty organizers reacted responsibly by re-weighting votes, assigning different values to tweets according to content and origin. Ah, the vagaries of life on the digital frontier.

Speaking of frontiers. Very few new ideas come along in advertising. But this may be one of them. Invent a fictional character---emphasis on invention. Don't appropriate a character from a TV show or film or book, a character you own no IP rights to. Invent an original character who can be made to do what you wish, gallivanting from twitter to facebook to youtube to...whatever the next social media platform will be. Use the character to build an audience. Then sell that audience like a media buy.

@FrankAdman appeared about the same time as AMC's Mad Men wandered into the twitterverse. He's a west coast art director living large in the 60s: chain-smoking, skirt-chasing, inventor of the virtual "Twittertini" which has evolved into the lexicon of social media-speak on Twitter. He now has over 14,000 followers. I don't know if @FrankAdman is for sale. But if I were Kodak or Clorox or Dewars or another brand with heritage in the 60s, I'd certainly put in a call. Er, a tweet.

I'm voting for @FrankAdman in the Shorty Awards because I love the idea of a fictional character winning in the advertising category again. (Last year's winner was the tweeter for Peggy Olson.) I want @FrankAdman and @BettyDraper to take home Shorty Awards this year. To help demonstrate the power of brand fiction in the digital universe.

I'm only sorry we'll have to pull AdBroad's campaign commercial.

To vote for Frank, go to the Shorty polls here. Vote for Betty here.

@BettyDraper goes Hollywood

At the kind invitation of Writers Guild West, I spent the week in Santa Monica, at Digital Hollywood, a four day thinklab exploring all that's erupting on the frenzied frontier of digital entertainment. Which is to say, entertainment.

I sat on a panel about Transmedia Storytelling with a distinguished lineup of fellow panelists that included Flint Dille, Dungeons and Dragons, Adam Armus, Heroes, Chris Ord and Matt Corman, Covert Affairs, and Jay Bushman, Orson Wells Sells His Soul to the Devil.

It was fascinating to hear how Flint is turning toys into TV shows. How Adam is working with Heroes writers to extend the show impressively across multiple platforms. How Jay is turning Halloween into Tweetplays. And Matt and Chris are turning Betty Draper's best friend into a spy for Covert Affairs.

I spoke as a Mad (Wo)Man on Twitter, about how to free TV characters from ordinary contraints of the medium, and how doing so can result in benefits for a show. I hate dealing with reading glasses on stage, so I used slides as talking points. Which I'm sharing here for anyone interested.

Future of Entertainment: Outside the Box

View more presentations from Helen Klein Ross.

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.

@BettyDraper needs your vote

It's that time of year again. Voting for panels for next year's SXSWi, the annual digipalooza in Austin. This year's list of offerings is more impressive than ever. Still, I'm throwing my (pillbox) hat in the ring. For last year's SXSW 2009 (which was great), I organized a "Behind the Scenes with Mad Men on Twitter" panel that seemed to go over well.

This year, I'm proposing two panel ideas. One that shares lessons in twittertainment learned from tweeting as @BettyDraper. The other sharing learnings from real life Mad Men which have surprising relevance to digital marketing. Hopefully one (or both!) of these ideas will gain traction. Whether or not they happen depends on (shameless appeal) votes from people like you! You can vote even if you can't be at the conference. SXSW releases podcasts of all presentations so you won't have to miss out! Hope you'll take a minute to give these the thumbs up. Just click on the bubbles. Or hot air balloons ;)

10 Rules of Brand Fiction from Mad Men's @BettyDraper
Recipes for creating successful twittertainment and other participatory entertainments that drive brand engagement and ROI by providing consumers with an immersive experience.

and

What Digital Marketers Can Learn From Mad Men
The transformation taking place in advertising today has been compared to the creative revolution on Madison Avenue when radio gave way to television as the most popular platform for entertainment. What do creative revolutionaries of the Mad Men era have to teach digital marketers today? Presentation will include screening of vintage commercials. Fedora optional.

Mad Men's Carla raises consciousness 140 characters at a time

Why do Mad Men fans write feeds for the characters? I know that for many of us, it's simply good fun. For others, it's fun and an interesting experiment in social media. For others of us, it's all that and...an opportunity to touch on controversial social issues the show bravely explores.

Latoya Peterson writing for Racialicious observes there's a twitter feed for Carla, the Drapers' African American housekeeper, which puts forth perspective that is "all but absent on the show".

Some critics have taken Mad Men to task for not dealing with social injustice in a more frontal manner. But Weiner's characters exist in a universe where concepts of feminism and racism are just beginning to take hold. Where sexual harassment not only doesn't have consequences, it won't have a name for a good twenty years.

HighJive, a popular blogger who writes on race and "cultural cluelessness" concedes that "finding fault with Mad Men’s rendering of ethnic minorities in the advertising industry is somewhat impossible because, well, they barely exist. They’re invisible."

Indeed, when the twitter feed for Carla first appeared in December, there was no profile pic. There wasn't a profile pic for Carla for weeks. The writer explained why in an email:

I have no picture because I'm invisible.

Carla remained without a profile pic until Jan 19, the day before Obama was sworn in:

Finally found one of my own pictures. Makes me feel like today is a holiday.

From time to time, the writer behind Carla touches on racial inequity taken for granted in the world of Ossining, circa 1963. Here's her exchange with Betty during a twitter-based Tea Party:

Carla: This uniform makes me feel uncomfortable. But I can't show it; must maintain my "quiet dignity" for the party.

Betty: And be sure and put out Cointreau for White Ladies.

Carla: Oh, won't all of your guests be white ladies at the party?

Betty: You are such a character! Gin + Cointreau + Lemon + Powdered Sugar = White Lady. Don't forget to iron your apron!

Carla: We could offer Black Ladies as well. Brandy + Grand Marnier + Kahlua. Paul Kinsey told me he likes Black Ladies.

Carla: And at least, I get to keep my own clothes clean if Betty and her friends spit up the White Ladies on the black lady.

Betty: And change the record on the hifi to Bing Crosby, would you?

Clara: Putting on Bing Crosby record, wishing I'd brought my Louie Armstrong "Christmas Night in Harlem" record to play.

Some tweeters have taken issue with @Carla_Madmen's sangfroid, wishing her to be more politically conscious:

re: Fixation on the Drapers' lives...don't you need to be marching for your civil rights or something?

But Carla on twitter remains in character. She is no Rosa Parks. She is like thousands of women were then as now: ordinary women trying to make the best of the cards they'd been dealt:

March? I get plenty of exercise walking to and from the train.

I do not know who writes @Carla_Madmen. But we have developed an email relationship in which we exchange views on racism and other issues that Carla and Betty can't discuss. I sent her the Racialicious piece and asked for her views on how blacks are depicted in Mad Men. She wrote:

African-Americans are the only grown-ups on Mad Men. To the limited extent you see them, they lack any discernible faults. Whether that's due to their minor roles, I'm not sure. I think it will be interesting to watch Mad Men develop larger roles for minority characters as the 60's progress -- single dimensional with quiet dignity or a more full range of human emotions and foibles. It's obviously a potential land mine for the writers.

And a gold mine of material for the writer of Carla's twitter feed.

dispatch from the twittertainment frontier

Being a Mad Man on Twitter provides unique opportunities to explore the frontiers of twittertainment. So while AMC was whipping up impressive frenzy for the premiere of Mad Men's Season Three last week, some of us Mad Men on Twitter got together to prepare a "tweaser": a fan-produced event in a parallel universe: a twitter show in which Mad Worlds Collide.

Mad Worlds Collide was a first in twittertainment. A dramatic improv produced, created and aired completely on twitter, it bridged the divide between dimensions by offering tickets and real-world Mad Men-era prizes.

The concept was this: in the hour before the long-awaited Mad Men premiere, our new twitter character Radio City hosted a virtual premiere for 1963 film "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World", preceded by a variety show in which @Jimmy_Barrett appeared "on stage" with stars of the film, @_EthelMerman and @EdieAdams. It was a scenario that allowed for the participation of all Mad Men on Twitter as well any fans game to get in on the fun.

We issued tickets. Prepared the venue. Sent out the word via tweets and Betty's blog. Even lined up some snazzy door prizes.

As showtime got closer, we drew up a timeline so that we could synchronize our (winding) watches:

9:00- 9:10 People hurrying to Radio City, waiting for show to begin or schmoozing in the lobby or backstage. Theater always gets started late.

9:10 Curtain goes up and Rockettes open the show. Lots of opps for tweeted thoughts from the crowd.

9:19 Curtain goes down.

9:20 Curtain comes up. A variety show is "supposed" to feature a lot of actors from the film. But @Jimmy_Barrett (pissed that Stanley Kramer didn't cast him) takes over the show.

9:30 Curtain goes down.

9:30 - 9:45 Intermission. People mingle in lobby. Door prizes are announced.

9:45 People go back to their seats, anxious for the screening to start .

9:50 Lights go out, in preparation for screening. Everyone posts scrowler which turns viewer screen black.

We crafted posts from RadioCity to act as MC to provide narrative structure, carefully timed and pre-posted to a third-party application which would send out the tweets at just the right moments. What we'd overestimated was distance between 1963 and 2009 technology. Pre-posted tweets from @_RadioCity didn't post. Why isn't my speaker system working tonite? (If we were IRL actors, perhaps we'd have known better than to put all our faith in the production crew.)

Without an MC, the "stage" turned into a free-for-all, truly experimental "theater": not only marvelous improv from @Jimmy_Barrett (see it here) but also fun, fast-paced, unscripted, completely organic and sometimes hilarious entertainment from the crowd. Which you can see here. Appropriate, we decided, to a madcap heist film. And to ground-breaking television drama. The audience certainly seemed to enjoy it.

10 rules of twittertainment I learned from @bettydraper

I was thrilled to be part of the recent 140 Conference in New York, a diverse gathering of social media players from around the world. (Video of sessions available here.)

 Illustrator Jonny Goldstein took marvelous visual notes of our Mad Men on Twitter panel. (Hope he got one of the twittertinis served by Frank Adman recently outed as David Benardo.) 

I had the chance to meet tweeters I've admired from afar. Including @SavvyAuntie (Melanie Notkin) who's just signed with TNT to live-tweet Saving Grace. And now that Brillstein Entertainment has teamed up with Amy Ephron to do a reality series based around twitter, I'm thinking maybe twittertainer will be a bona fide job description someday.

So, for those looking to hone skills, here's a few tips I've learned from @BettyDraper:

1. Reserve character names in several iterations. (At least @firstname and @first_name) 

2. "Adopt" more than one character so you can stage spontaneous scenes which won't work as well if you have to wait to coordinate time zones and schedules with other writers. Novelists and playwrights speak for more than one character. A good writer can handle multiple characters just as successfully in this medium. Imbue each with a separate personality as distinctive on twitter as it is on TV. 

3. Don't deviate from storyline. You're looking to extend viewers' interest in the show, not showcase your own scriptwriting talents. If you go off storyline, fans will feel betrayed. The most common praise from Mad Men on twitter fans is how good we are at staying in character.

4. Remember, fans play a large role in twittertainment. Don't broadcast show schedules and timing. Twittertainment works only if it's entertainment. Engage fans by interacting with them, not just other characters. Incorporate fan tweets into your stream. Build out your character with Linked-in, Facebook, even a personal blog. @BettyDraper recognizes twitter fans in some of her blog posts. She also hosts (virtual) parties in Ossining to which not only characters, but fans are invited.

5. You don't have to respond to every tweet. Only answer questions that appeal to a broader audience. And when responding to tweets, incorporate the question into the answer, so followers will know what's going on. 

6. The shorter your tweet, the more retweetable . Two of the most retweeted Betty posts are the blandest : "Tying a scarf" and "Frosting cupcakes."

7. Get the details right. Fictional characters must be perceived as authentic. (!)  Part of what makes Mad Men on twitter work is ferocious devotion to period detail. I was born the same year Sally Draper was, so am personally acquainted with the 60s, but I don't trust details of the era to the memory of a child. I have an entire collection of vintage cookbooks and housekeeping manuals so that tweets will contain historically accurate references like "Rob Roys" and "bluing."

8. Use Twitter's "real time" advantage to dimensionalize posts. Mad Men characters still immersed in the 60's "unwittingly" comment on real time events. On January 20, Inauguration Day, Betty tweeted "Shocked by a colored man swearing on television." When Matt Weiner was honored by the Clios in Las Vegas, Mad Men tweeted from the CLIOs in 1963, from the Waldorf Astoria, where the Clio's that year had a Las Vegas theme.

9. Writing twittertainment is surprisingly time consuming, requiring time for not only posting, but research and reading and monitoring tweet streams of other characters. Don't expect it's something you or someone else can do in just a few minutes a day. And if you're looking to hire, don't just look for a good writer. Look for someone energetic and outgoing who loves to perform. Twittertainment is equal parts writing and improv. 

10. Have fun! Once your characters take up residence outside the (tv) box, there's no telling where their adventures will lead them. And you. 

me and my new BFF Matt Weiner

Of course, the highlight of last night's CLIO awards for me was getting the opportunity to speak with Matt Weiner, recipient of first honorary CLIO award which wasn't a shiny gold statuette (his spots for the Relaxicizer would have to be real to earn one of those) but instead the more understated and recession-appropriate Lucite.

He is also creator of characters I ran away with on Twitter. So I was a little nervous about shaking hands with him. But "Mind?" he asked, looking incredulous. "I love what you're doing with Betty Draper!" Heartening words indeed from the man who created her. He said he loved all the Mad Men on Twitter and asked me to thank the other writers behind them. Sheepishly adding that he doesn't twitter himself. Yet.

I was impressed by his warmth and patience for photo-opps with fans who swarmed him. And by his generous words on the stage: I was interested in the history of advertising, and ironically I get to be a part of advertising history. But what most impressed me was that after accepting his award, he didn't bolt backstage to party or jet home to LA. He humbly stepped down, took a seat at a front table and watched attentively as others gathered their awards, looking rapt through even the student competitions. He is an old-school gentleman just like Don Draper. And, apparently, just as captivated by the business of advertising.

greetings from vegas. but where were the CLIO's in 1963?

Writing this from (as the sign says) "Fabulous Las Vegas" where the Clio Awards is celebrating its 50th anniversary by showcasing statuette-winners from five decades. They'll also be honoring Matt Weiner tonight for his Mad Men work that dramatizes advertising in the 1960s, generally considered to be the turning point in the business, the time when advertising became a legitimate career instead of a shady enterprise propogated by hucksters. (You may not agree that this shift occurred.)

Betty Draper will be tweeting the event with other Mad Men on Twitter. (From a 1963 POV, of course.) Of course she'll be far more dressed up than most attendees. In the 60s, award shows were black tie. Every gentleman owned one. The few female invitees toted gowns and heels to their offices and you didn't want to go to the ladies room at 5 PM when air was heavy with perfume and hairspray and you'd likely see a boss in her girdle.

Doing a little research into CLIO archives turns up names long gone, but not quite forgotten: Normal, Craig & Kummel; NW Ayer; Oglivy, Benson & Mather; Paper, Koenig, Lois; Benton & Bowles (more commonly referred to as B&B.)

Still-vibrant DDB won best in 1963 for this sixty-second long (interminable, by our standards) spot using actor Jack Gilford for Cracker Jacks. Creative kudos went to writer Judy Protas (though the spot is silent) and inimitable art director Bob Gage.

what we learned being mad men on twitter

.

Part of the fun of sxsw was getting to meet people whose work I’ve admired only from afar. Steve Hall. Guy Kawasaki. Frank Rose. Henry Jenkins. And Roger Sterling aka Michael Bissell. Here we are, with Peggy Olson aka Carri Bugbee after the panel we had the pleasure of giving. During Behind the Scenes with Mad Men on Twitter , Carri summed up learning for all of us, which constitutes great advice for entertainment brands seeking to create what I call brand fiction:

1. Reserve twitter addresses for the names of all characters for projects in development. If a character’s name isn’t available, you might want to go so far as to change it before you launch the show. Because if the name isn’t available, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to retrieve it.

2. Monitor (constantly!) what’s being said about your brand in digital space. If you’re not following what people are saying about you on Twitter, you’re missing out on a treasure trove of critical data.

3. If you find yourself in the middle of a maelstrom as AMC did upon Twitter accounts shutdown, don’t bury your head. Use the dustup to your advantage. Turn the tide, as AMC did when they made sure accounts were up and running again within 24 hours.

4. For most companies, the hardest part of venturing into social media is relinquishing control they’ve taken for granted was theirs. But real-time conversations can’t be submitted for approvals. Content creators stand to gain enormously when they allow “hijacked” efforts that blur the line between brand infringement and brand extension, encouraging passionate support of advocates who will drive engagement deeper within their communities.

5. The new marketing model's component of twittertainment is surprisingly time consuming, given that posts are just 140 characters. But doing a good job takes not only adroit postings, it takes research and reading and active monitoring across a variety of platforms. Don’t expect it’s a job that current staff can simply add on. And when you choose a community manager for the role, be sure it’s someone who’s energetic and outgoing and loves to perform—look for someone who’s a bit of a ham.

6. Assign one writer to several characters. Only by controlling multiple characters, can you stage spontaneous scenes and mini-dramas which won’t work as well if characters are controlled by people who need to be coordinated, over timezones and schedules. If one writer can handle more than one character in a book or screenplay, she will prove to be equally dexterous in this medium.

If you’d like to read more, Texas State grad student Chris Troutman just posted an interesting review of the Mad Men on Twitter panel, complete with footage. Daniel Terdiman did a thoughtful writeup about what our work means for the future of marketing. And check out Supporting Characters, a consultancy that Carri and Michael and I are forming, with others. (And now back to our regularly scheduled program.)

how not to sound like a zombie on twitter

One of the most enlightening things about my extreme twitter experience has been to learn which tools are effective in building a twitter audience--and which are not.

For instance, by signing up for a service like TweetLater,  you can enhance your chances of retaining new followers by generating a welcome message to accompany the standard alert they receive from Twitter. I've never gone to this extreme myself, but check out this auto-greeting sent last week by the other twittering Betty Draper. Hats off to her, I think it's a winner:

Will you be my friend? My husband Don is on an endless ‘business trip’ and I’m not even sure I need him, anyway.

Her appeal, though canned,  is effective for three reasons: it sounds personal, it gives followers an idea of what kind of content to expect and is 100% free of marketing jargon. Twitter newbies might even be convinced that January Jones is staring at a screen somewhere, breathlessly awaiting their next post. 

Of course not every auto-greeting is as savvy as this one. Most are salespitches for things you don't want, from someone who obviously hasn't read your tweets, and sound transparently bot-generated, making you want to unfollow promptly. (Suspect you're one of these clueless senders? Track who unfollows you, and when. Sign up for Qwitter.)

Here are the lamest auto-greetings I received, tweeting as Betty Draper. Proof that as useful as bots and zombies can be, they still can't do the job of a good copywriter.

Elizabeth, thx for following.
— Beware the bot that formalizes nicknames.

Hi! I am a personal development coach. What are you doing in your life and your business?
—I'm an imaginary character in 1962. The only personal development coach here is Dear Abby.

Thanks for the follow. Btw, what are you working on at the mo?
—Mo?

Hi! Feel free to ask my your most pressing lead generation questions for real estate.
— Not even if divorce puts the Ossining house on the market.

Hey cool! In one tweet, what makes you unique?
— It would take a whole season.

Let's make Money Online Together!!
— Sure! I've been sitting around just waiting to meet a business partner this way.

Hi, Champion! Special Bonus for you "177 Motivational Success Quote"
— Um, did you mean to follow my horse?

Hi, would love to know what you think of my blog.
— Enough about you. Let's talk about you.

Thanks for the follow! Hope you have a fabulous day!!! The Blouse Gap Eliminator 

—Talk about a product with limited market potential. Better try @joan_holloway or @jane_siegel.  

i am @bettydraper

via ignite social media

If you thought you were corresponding with January Jones or one of Weiner's writers or a neglected housewife circa. 1962--sorry for the spoiler. I am one of the large (and still growing) cast of Mad Men characters on Twitter.

As has already been revealed, the cast of Mad Men twitterers is in no way connected with AMC or Matthew Weiner. Neither are they part of Deep Focus (AMC's digital ad agency) or any other PR marketing group, despite tweets like one from @ddrager yesterday guessing tweeters are paid or "they wouldn't go to the lengths they have, and for how long they've been at it!" Rational people, he means.

My life as a Mad Man began as a lark. On August 26, just after AMC lawyers changed their minds about closing down Mad Men twitter accounts (persuaded in part by bloggers and journalists who couldn't believe AMC would toss away a brilliant promotional idea that did not cost them a cent) I went on Twitter to see which character was still available, and signed up @francine_hanson. I found a nice photo of her on the AMC website and started to tweet, trying to engage @betty_draper. But she wouldn't tweet back. Instead, she sent me a nasty direct message. So I went back on twitter and registered @bettydraper; now I had a Betty to play with.

Naively, I believed at that point the Twitter Mad Men were connected with AMC, that we were in some sort of "playoff" for jobs as twitter-writers for the show. Surely no one would do this for free, I thought, as days went by and I realized how much, how VERY much time it took to properly twitter a character (the reading! the rewatching shows! the historical research into what was around in 1962 and what was not!)

By the time I learned that what I'd signed up for was a volunteer effort⎯I was too hooked to quit. There is a thrill that comes with taking on another persona, interacting with the world as someone else, especially if that someone is as complex and interesting⎯ and as sexy and glam⎯as Matthew Weiner's Betty.

I found myself scouting for back issues of Life magazines, searching for things for Betty and Francine to do together. I ordered books online ("The Golden Age of the 60s") and spent hours and hours googling 60s culture, making sure that my tweets were historically accurate. (Of course, it helped that I'd lived the era myself, but I didn't want to trust my tweets to the memory of a child.)

Needless to say, all this living in the past took a toll on my life in 2008. I began to resent time away from the twitter screen, began to beg off social engagements, turned lunch meetings into phone meetings, neglected my work, friends, my family. My blog!

"You're not tweeting again, are you?" my husband would ask, coming into the room, when he knew I had actual deadlines to meet, emails to answer, bills to pay. "Uh, no," I'd lie, feeling as guilty as Sally caught smoking, hurriedly switching the screen back to Quicken.

What are you doing, I'd ask myself as I googled an old recipe for German noodles or the television schedule for 1962. But I couldn't stop. Just one more tweet, I'd think, then I'll go back to work. But to write that one tweet, I had to find out the year that Tastykakes were invented…

At first, the follower counts of the two Bettys were too far apart for the other Betty to care much, except to send me a few nasty dms. (" I suggest you try your hand at being who you really are, some (real, ok) woman dreaming about Don, and we'll all get by.") I had a few hundred followers to her fifteen hundred. But as weeks went by and my count kept going up, she began to make noise, insisting the Betty character was "hers" as she'd staked the claim first. The people behind the Don and Peggy twitter accounts agreed, insisting that "First come, first claim" was the rule--which surely made sense from their own perspectives. But "landing rights" seemed to me an odd approach for creative endeavors, like Weiner hiring the the first actor who shows up for the job. And I found it ironic--hilarious, even--that the character who was a wild philanderer on screen was proving so monogamous in the twitterverse.

If I'd been a sane person, I'd have quit when I realized that @don_draper wasn't going to acknowledge @bettydraper in the public timeline, though he'd sent her husbandly direct messages in private. ("Be home soon, Birdie" and "I'll be home in an hour".) In fan fiction terms, not being acknowledged by the main character is the equivalent of being sent to the Siberian front.

But I wasn't a sane person. I had grown insatiable, driven by an almost physical need to communicate as Betty to my "fans." I had almost a thousand followers now. How could I let them down? My Betty had even begun to come to life in the blogosphere.

At this point, I gave away the Francine account, and a few other characters I'd picked up on the way, to devote my full energies and concentration to Betty. She was the main character, the most interesting one, the one I most wanted to "be."

My follower count grew. And grew. And I learned a lot about what fuels success on Twitter: your popularity is determined not so much by what you say, as who you are, saying it. If you want to build following, it's best to be (or pretend to be) an industry leader or a famous writer or one of the lead characters in a popular TV series. I'm not the first to observe that @don_draper's posts are pretty bland, considering the creative genius he's supposed to be. Yet this doesn't deter his 3800 followers. The person behind @pete_campbell doesn't post at all; he stopped after only four tweets in August, yet his follower list continues to grow, exceeding 760 as of this writing.

I also learned that your popularity on Twitter also has a lot to do with how many people you follow. For most twitterers, follow limits are capped at 2000. Which may sounds like a lot to you. But if you're building a fanbase, it's not enough. @don_draper has so many followers, in part because he follows over 3000 people. I somehow learned how to uncap my follow limit and @peggyolson sent me a friendly email inquiring how I did it. I thought about withholding the answer from her, knowing she'd pass it along to Don's Betty--but I recoiled at the thought of being so anti-social…in social media! Sure enough, the other Betty blew the cap off her follow count the next day.

Following people is tedious; a lot of hunting and pecking. Basically you're poaching from similar twitterers' follower lists or searching twitter for posts using key words like "Mad Men" and following the people who said them. Add following time to the time to research posts to the time to write them…what was I doing?

Yet. I couldn't stop. Now my fanbase numbered 2000!

For a while, Bud the Mailman made valiant efforts to get us to work as a team. He solicited our email addresses and circulated them but after a few rounds of enthusiastic exchanges (we could do storylines! product placements! sponsorships!) it became clear that we could never work together, as we could never agree on anything, not even on whether or not to meet up.

One of the most curious aspects of the whole experience is how true to character each of us stayed (except for the philandering); how even when dealing with each other we remained in character, as if we were actors instead of PR types, ad hacks and digerati for hire. In group emails, I found myself sounding housewifely and deferential; Peggy was earnest and fiercely loyal to Don (whom she'd never met); Sal was ironic and devil-may-care; Don was tacitly acknowledged to be the boss, and took an authoritative tone with us, as if he'd started a company instead of a twitter account.

My follower count at 2800 exceeded the other Betty's this week. Why am I outing myself now? I find I've lost stomach for our competition. I realize the lengths she is willing to go to, lengths that I am unwilling to match. I want my life back. But, you can take a valuable lesson from her, if you're looking to pump your popularity on Twitter:

1. Craft an auto-message that goes out to all the people you follow. The standard message people receive from Twitter when someone follows them is "Betty Draper is now following you on Twitter." But you can configure a unique appeal to accompany it. Something like "@Betty_Draper wants to be your friend and begs you not to follow fake @bettydraper."

2. Create a new character that will acknowledge you often in tweets, validating your character and sending you followers. (This means, of course, you'll have to keep up more than one character. Forget that day job.)

2. Set up a Twitter site ostensibly designed to impartially rate the quality of whatever category tweets you are doing. Like the @OnMadMen site run by ex-MM Twitterer @jimmy_barrett which claims to be "A critical look at Mad Men on Twitter…let's keep the game fun and healthy, shall we?"

This will allow you to:

a. Stage a contest between you and competitors
b. Dm followers asking them to "vote" for you in the contest.
c. Win the vote!

Inspired in spite of this post to launch your own Mad Men twitter account? Join the crowd. The latest cast count is 67, I think, including @ xerox914, the handsome new Sterling Cooper copier. You'll be helping to keep good TV alive by taking part in a small but effective branding campaign. How do I know it's effective? Lots of people post that they are inspired to watch Mad Men because of the tweets.

Which brings me to my bill, AMC. Given my day rate and the time I've put in so far, I figure you owe me $48,000.

emmys validate Mad Men obsessives

My obsession with Mad Men (damn you, Matt Weiner) was validated last night by the fact that the series made Emmy history, being the first basic-cable show to win best drama award.

Weiner also picked up the award for best drama writing. Only disappointments to me were that Jon "Don Draper" Hamm lost out for best actor and that (creepily true to the show's premise of White Guys Rule) none of the stellar actresses (Hello, January! Howdy, Christina!) received even a nod.

What makes the win interesting to insiders is that the show took home the grand prize despite the fact that Hollywood traditionally sees success through the prism of viewership. Mad Men evangelists may be surprised to know that its 2 million strong fan base pales in comparison to the 21 million glued to American Idol's finale in May. But no doubt last night's wins will help convert more fanatics. Sign of a fanatic? Following Mad Men and Women 24/7 on Twitter. Here's their rolodex:

Don Draper
Betty Draper
Peggy Olson
Joan Holloway
Bobbie Barrett

Jimmy Barrett
Sal Romano
Kitty Romano
Pete Campbell
Trudy Campbell
Roger Sterling
Ken Cosgrove
Paul Kinsey
Bertram Cooper
Helen Bishop
Bud Melman
Father Gill
Freddy Rumsen
Duck Phillips
Sally Draper
Bobby Draper
Francine Hanson
Midge Daniels

Harry Crane
Dick Whitman
David Ogilvy
Bill Bernbach
Benjamin Spock