@MargaretAtwood's ode in 140 to @StephenKing

If there was any doubt that Margaret Atwood writes her own twitter, it was dispelled by her performance tonite in which she improv'd a fractured Xmas carol to newcomer Stephen King. This isn't the first time she's been brilliant in short. A few years ago, Wired asked her to come up with a six word story and she cribbed a checklit novel instead: "Longed for him. Got him. Shit."

I

twitter goes to bed with tv

Inquiring minds at Brandwatch and My Clever Agency did an interesting study on how "dual screening" is transforming TV watching. Finds:

1. Dual screeners are most likely to tweet from bed. (Surely soon to be a New Yorker cartoon.)

2. Viewers are 12 times more likely to tweet about a show during days it's on air vs. days it isn't.

3. Tweeters are more negative about shows as they're being aired than they are about them after they've aired. (The past is always better, even in TVland)

4. Less than half of TV shows in the US include official hashtag in their broadcast. (When will showrunners get with the program their audience is watching?)

5. Most TV shows do use official hashtags on Twitter, however. (At least there's that.)

6. Almost half of the official TV show Twitter accounts seldom engage fans, not responding to mentions or queries.

More goodness here, with pretty infographic.

Kenneth Cole explains it all to you

I don't tweeter. But in the Town Car on the way to office this morning I think of something real funny to say--KC

I find out people don't have a sense of humor like they did in the 80s. Sheesh!--KC

Good thing is, I learned how to Facebook today! --KC

What I frankly don't get is why lawyers are all up my a**, but they can't send a simple cease and desist to this guy--KC

twitter donates your tweets to Library of Congress

Better lock up your Twitter if you don't want posterity reading your posts. Announcement today from Twitter at its first conference for developers: it's donating access to all but privatized tweets to the Library of Congress, going back to the first tweet dated March 21, 2006 from co-founder Jack Dorsey: "just setting up my twttr." The mission of the Library, the nation's oldest federal cultural institution, is to "sustain and preserve a universal collection of knowledge and creativity for future generations." A post on the Library's blog says it now holds 167 terabytes of information culled from the Web since 2000. Fittingly, it announced the acquisition in a tweet sent out to its 53,000 followers. Pity the poor dweeb whose job is to assign Dewey call numbers.

tip of the tricorner to Bill Green

why i'm going to work in a factory

I've worked in advertising almost since Eve sold the apple and have seen lots of changes. But nothing compares to the tidal wave causing fundamental realignments in the business now. That shift is caused by the only thing that ever causes marketers to change their behavior--consumer behavior.

Used to be brands told their story via broadcast but consumers are no longer willing to sit back in their Lazy Boys, content to take in a product story pipelined to them; they expect to be an active part of the narrative. Brand stories must be recrafted to allow for audience interaction and delivered in forms created and produced for whichever environment the audience prefers to receive it.

A few frontrunner brands are recognizing this shift in consumer psychology and recrafting their message accordingly, designing campaigns to provide immersive and participative experiences across a wide range of platforms.

Coke transformed a brilliant concept behind an award-winning TV commercial into a global media franchise with multiple revenue streams. BMW hired filmmakers like Ridley and Tony Scott to create short films that highlighted particular performance aspects of vehicles. Dove deconstructed media portrayal of beauty to relieve its target consumer of cultural baggage and further insinuate itself into her good graces. AMC's Mad Men raised the bar by actually getting fans to do their marketing for them. Not only did they permit fans to appropriate characters and create a twitter-based campaign, they launched a micro-site that resulted in the conversion of over 600,000 social media avatars to what are, in essence, ads for brand Mad Men.

Plenty of smart digital strategists are out there to advise on where and how and when to launch brand stories into the webiverse. But how to decide what those stories should be? How to make a story that's not only engaging but true to the brand's DNA? How to build a mythology that extends current marketing efforts? How, in other words, to do the creative?

Which is why I'm launching Brand Fiction Factory, in the company of other Mad Men on Twitter conspirators. It's a creative content provider for ad agencies, entertainment companies, brand managers and others seeking to use narrative in the digital space to maximize consumer engagement. The factory shop sign isn't spit and polished quite yet. But doors are open and we're open for business. Do drop by!

no status update = new status symbol?

At Digital Hollywood this year, I had the privilege of speaking on a panel with Flint Dille, game designer and writer who's brought complex worlds to life on the screen. Flint raised an interesting question this week while talking to Stuart Volcow's UCLA Transmedia class, about the possibility of a rising backlash against tech media and the sheer cerebral velocity of our lives. I joined the discussion when he moved it to Facebook. (Btw, checked your privacy settings lately?)

I, too, sense a rising resistance to life lived constantly connected and at cyberspeed. Several friends tell me they're getting off Facebook because they're tired of being bombarded with friend requests from people they "didn't like in 3rd grade and surely don't want to be friends with now." One respondent told Flint that she'd started "conducting periodic 'e-fasts', 'fasting' from all e-stuff (phone, e-mail, internet) for a few days at a time" which she reported to find tremendously refreshing.

Studies show, if you're trying to be creative, uplugging for a while is the right idea. An essay in today's NYT Book Review by Jennifer Schuessler says researchers found that when your brain is in quiet mode, undistracted (like when you're under an MRI scanner, for instance, yikes) the brain is in fact firing away, with greater activity in creative areas like autobiographical memory and conjuring fictional events. Ironically, quiet mode is the precise opposite of the setting in which most of our brains are trying to be productive.

Aren't you a tiny bit jealous of the guy you can't call because he doesn't carry around a cellphone? The friend you see only on Skype now and then because he's holed up in Istanbul writing the Great American Novel...on a typewriter?

It used to be that 24/7 connection meant status, but now I suspect that stepping away from the digital world for a while is becoming a luxury that privileged few can afford. Having people manage around you, without your having to conduct a cyberlife, is becoming akin to the royal option of shopping without carrying a wallet. Ironically, it may also explain why Bill Gates is only now discovering twitter.

and for those who still can't find time to twitter

Now there's Flutter. Limited to 26 characters. Imports Twitter and FB posts, editing them to fit. "Sucking last of latte before facing client in meeting" becomes "Sucking client in meeting." Full GPS capabilites auto-announces wherever you are. As in helpfully informative: "In the bathroom."

Of course, it's a (really well done & worth watching) spoof. But it does bring up a serious question being bantered about among many social media-minded. What's the next big thing? Is there life after twitter?


via Huffington Post via new! improved! Slate

still twitter-averse? finding time to get roundtuit

Near a little town in the country I escape to on weekends there's a modest diner with the unlikely name of Round Tuit, opened in the 1930s by a farmer who'd talked about opening a restaurant for years. Eventually, the farmer died and the diner passed to his son. Like many small business owners, the son had no insurance. So when the Round Tuit burned down, I mourned the loss of an institution I thought gone for good. But I'd underestimated the stoutheartedness of local patrons. Enough money was raised to rebuild the restaurant and the son lovingly replicated his father's place in every small detail: same linoleum tiles, same Formica tabletops, same wood panelled walls, even the same plastic-framed photos of cows on them. (Only thing he did differently was the pie case, because the original pie case people had gone out of business.)

Sorry to say, I was reminded of Rountuit at the Clios this week. Because it was clear that some ad agencies boasting "digital departments" have built them on the same entrenched practices and outdated values that have fed the way the ad business has been operating for years.

"Twitter sucks," according to the Chief Digital Officer of a top tier agency, who is presumably advising global clients on navigating social media.

"I don't do twitter," announced another speaker who went on to explain he was holding off having to learn it because, "the next big thing is probably just around the corner."

Sure, there were provocative speeches by agency creatives who get it. But twitter-aversion was rampant enough to make me wonder: why is an industry that prides itself on pioneering thought and creative breakthroughs having to be led to the sm frontier by the very clients we're supposed to be leading?

"If I let one more time-suck into my life, I'm doomed," said an ECD who was putting off learning twitter until this summer when her teenager was around. I understood her being daunted by the time barrier. Like many ad agency execs, she's struggling to stretch already long days made longer by reduced bugets, dwindling staff and heightened client demands--like demands to get them into social media.

But twitter (or any social media platform) isn't a monster that consumes your valuable hours while you sit on the sidelines, helplessly watching the clock.

Twitter takes only as much time as you let it. So even if you don't have time to get into Twitter, you have time to get it. OK, don't use it to post what you're having for breakfast. (Most tweeters don't, after their first post or two.) Use it for what most (including smart folks at Google) consider to be its most valuable feature: search.

Twitter search can help you ferret out nuggets of information, insights that can be gold for you and your clients. Search your company, your clients, your clients' products, their competitors. Get a sense of what's happening in your niche in the industry, right this minute, all over the world.

And, Twitter automatically informs searchers of "trending topics"-- top ten words appearing right now on Twitter. It's the most efficient way to keep abreast on what's toplining in news. The morning I saw "Biden" I knew, of course, he'd been picked. "Updike" told me, alas, he had died. Just now, I searched Twitter and AT&T came up. Why? I clicked through and discovered that the company is considering cuts to Iphone price plans. If your client is a mobile, such news might be relevant to a meeting you're leading. And knowing it instantly can make you look a lot more wise and informed than you probably feel these days.

Which brings me to another reason to "lurk" on twitter. It makes you smarter. You know how reading a great columnist can make you sound knowledgeable? Following people who share content relevant to you and your clients can definitely make you wiser (and more valuable) at meetings. Because you're being constantly fed by people plugged into your industry sharing the latest news on what's happening in it.

So, ad brethren: if you're not into twitter, time to get round tuit. Unless you're planning  a change of career. Like moving to the country to open a diner. Where you'd face daunting competition from a much-beloved and enduring brand. Not to mention the pie.

fail whale on twitter and it can cost you

With copywriters streaming jobless into the streets, how hard can it be to find one to ghost-tweet for you, posting random observations a few times a day in no more than 140 characters? The job might seem like a cinch, but remember--in the twitterverse, authenticity reigns. Posers and pushers are quickly called out. Which is what happened to Hugh Jackman the other day when "his" tweet mistakenly referred to the well-known Sydney Opera House as the Opera Center. The blooper is apparently costing him $100K, which he's offering to donate to some lucky tweeter's charity of choice. (Presumably, so he can get the tax write-off.) Got a nonprofit you want to pimp? Tell Hugh about it. But be brief. Very brief. Say, 140 characters.

world's first twitter ad agency?

Yeah, it's a recession. Ad agencies all around us are downsizing, reorganizing, even shutting their doors. (RIP, JWT/Chicago.) So, um. Yeah. What better time to start up a new one. We met as twittering Mad Men. Now we're forming a Mad Men 2.0 agency. Same convenient initials as Sterling Cooper. Supporting Characters. It's a consortium of social media players I'm proud to be part of. Advertising veterans. PR strategists. Creative technologists. Futurists. To help brands achieve relevance in digital space.

Yesterday, Ad Age posted a video piece about it and my partner, Carri Bugbee (aka @PeggyOlson). Ad Age called us the world's first twitter ad agency. But we won't do only twitter. In fact, we'll sometimes advise against it. Because we believe that a technology platform ought to be the last choice you make when designing a social media campaign. We'll talk more about this and other hard-won insights in our Social Media Road Show. Coming soon (hopefully) to a conference room near you.

twestival

Seems all New Yorkers who twitter were at Twestival last night. (Or had at least sent in $20 for the charity it supported.) It was a club-like venue that was already packed when I arrived with Peggy Olson a few minutes after it started. As soon as people entered, they pulled out their iphones (i hate my centro) and began tweeting to find out if they had friends there. If you coded your tweet with #nyctwestival, it appeared on a giant screen showing n a continuous scroll of posts like @ me if you are here and @adbroad, I am near the yellow jerry cans in the center. Which is how I had the good fortune to meet Alan Wolk in person. No, he's not the breakdancing astronaut. That's Mat Man who was a finalist for a Shorty Award in the, um, Weird category. For an event inspired by a platform for conversation, odd that the music was so LOUD you couldn't talk except directly into someone's ear. Which made conversation so exhausting, lots of people gave up and stood silently sipping $16 drinks, tweeting people who weren't there. 

your password's in the dictionary? anybody can look it up

I know you're not unsavvy enough to write your password on the back of your ATM card as one fellow I met did. (Admittedly, he was new to New York.) But chances are, to make it easier to remember, you've chosen a password that appears in the pages of Webster's. So?

Turns out that a "dictionary attack" is the most common, easiest-to-pull-off kind of hacking. It's why power Twitter-user Obama sent out thousands of tweets Monday urging supporters to try for $500 of free gas. And why Fox News announced that host Bill O'Reilly "is gay." And Rick Sanchez from CNN tweeted "I am high on crack right now might not be coming into work today."

Last weekend, an 18-year old hacker who's been perpetrating cyber-hoaxes since he was 15, turned his attention to Twitter, the micro-blogging service he hadn't heard of until seeing someone mention it on YouTube. (Further confirming rampant suspicion that Twitter is not yet embraced by Millenials, sorry Biz.) YouTube, on the other hand, was a service with which GMZ (his code name) was intimately familiar. Last year he hacked the YouTube account of teen idol Miley Cyrus (Hannah Montana) and posted that she'd been killed in a car accident.



Using a self-authored dictionary attacker, GMZ tried to guess the passwords of several of Twitter's most popular users. He let the program run overnight and when he checked results Monday around 11 AM, he discovered he'd gotten into an account for someone named Crystal. He didn't know that she was a member of Twitter's support staff (who must have known better than to trust the security of her account to "happiness".) "I thought she was just a really popular member" he later told Wired. But after delving into her account, he realized that by using the tools Crystal had access to, he could change any Twitter user's password.

Excitedly, he posted a message to Digital Gangster, a forum for hackers (who knew there was one?) offering free access to any Twitter account. To prove he had access, he posted a video of his hack to YouTube. Twenty hackers immediately asked for access to Obama's account; he "awarded" it to five. He also filled requests for access to Britney Spears' account, as well as the official feeds for Facebook, CBS News, Fox News , the accounts of CNN correspondent Rick Sanchez and Digg founder Kevin Rose, and other celebrities. He compromised 33 high-profile accounts in the two hours before Twitter figured out what was happening and shut him down.

According to Twitter, the violated accounts were almost immediately closed and restored within hours. Still. A few minutes of stolen Twitter Time can do a lifetime of damage. Consider the ramifications of updating followers as Britney Spears inadvertantly did: posting the dimensions of your, ahem, Vagina Monolgue.

Do what IT technicians needle you to do: use passwords that contain both lower-case and upper-case letters, as well as numbers or special characters. In researching this, I can't tell you how many times a popup invited me to Get any password for just $9.99!

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.  

problems with twitter? welcome to the twilight zone

You may have heard that Twitter is revolutionizing customer service, providing the platform whereby companies riddled with terrible reputations for customer service are now redeeming their good names. Comcast, Home Depot, Dell and others have set up Twitter accounts and assigned employees to lurk online, browsing Twitter Search for disgruntled consumers having trouble with their service, enabling the company to swoop in to solve a complaint instantly or put the complainer in touch with someone who can help.

You'd think that Twitter, ultimately responsible for changing the customer service paradigm, would be at the forefront of customer service themselves. You would be wrong.

A week ago, my twitter account began to have problems. At first, things went well. Help on Twitter's dashboard launched me into a website with the promising name of Get Satisfaction. But, it turned out to be a dispiriting place-- a repository for complaints about not just Twitter but "thousands of companies" where questions go unanswered for weeks, even even though the site claims "Twitter is here! 21 people are listening and participating!" A complaint similar to mine posted 2 months ago is followed by a happy face inviting me "to be the first to reply!" A sidebar asks the dispiriting question: "Know any helpful people? Email this question to them!"

It takes some time to post my complaint because, as is par for Twitter, parameters must be strictly adhered to. The first is: Give your problem a great title. Really? Seems just when your service is pissing me off, Twitter, is not the right moment to ask me to be creative. But. Whatever. I fill in a description of the problem, ("one or two paragraphs work best!"), come up with tags (couldn't Twitter make a bot do this?) then comes the most annoying parameter of all. "One last thing before you post…how does this problem make you feel?" My choices are four emoticons (I hate emoticons) : smiley, sad, serious, tongue sticking out. After choosing one (you can guess) I must "describe my feelings in words" to "increase the likelihood of my problem getting noticed." Really? Questions aren't answered in queue, Twitter decides which to answer depending on how people articulate their feelings?

Luckily, I must have chosen the right words, because my problem is addressed within the hour. Unfortunately, the answer is: we can't answer this, you have to post this problem on the twitter help site. But I thought this was the twitter help site? I log onto the new URL provided and go through the "fill in the boxes" thing again.

Days go by. (Days in twitter-time are equivalent to centuries.) I log back into Get Satisfaction (which must be the world's most ironically named website) to ask when I might be hearing from Twitter. It takes several more days for them to respond. Vaguely: "Unfortunately, it really does take some time before we see a response from Twitter Support because they're dealing with a backlog."

Twitter has no customer service phone number (naturally) but they do post a snail mail address. So I sit down and write an old-fashioned letter. Wouldn't it be ironic if it turns out that snail-mail is what it takes to get Twitter's attention? It's been 7 days and still no word from them. C'mon, Twitter. If you care about users (and some say that you don't) why not put some of that $15 million of venture into dealing with the customers you already have?

UPDATE
Twitter's @crystal (who kindly replied in a comment) worked doggedly to fix the problem and solved it w/in 24 hours. Thanks, Crystal! The lesson? If you've got a problem with twitter, forget their help desk. Post your problem to @crystal to Get Satisfaction.

singing the twitter anthem

I was at a dinner party this weekend, and found myself trying to explain Twitter and the reasons I like it. I am paid quite a lot for words that make things sound appealing, but I failed to sway compatriots at the table who remained convinced that life was social enough what with email and IMs and LinkedIn and text messages.

"But it is just like text messages," I insisted, suddenly feeling like one of those evangelists you avoid at Times Square. "Only from lots and lots of people at once."

"Lots of people you don't know?" asked a periodontist. And then I gave up.

So I was impressed to discover that a songwriter, Ben Walker not only found words to describe Twitter, he put them to music in a video that, as of this writing, has over 244,500 youtube hits. In case you can't spare three minutes to watch it (because if you're not on twitter, email probably sucks up way too much of your time) here's what he says:

In the old days it was all about achievements
collecting all your trophies in a shrine;
then everybody came across the internet
and suddenly you had to be online.

A home page was all you really needed
to seem like a success but not a geek.
As long as you updated semi-annually,
and checked your email once or twice a week.

But now you're no one if you're not on Twitter
And you aren't there already, you've missed it.
If you haven't been bookmarked, retweeted and blogged
You might as well not have existed.

Now you need to publish every movement
and every single thought to cross your mind
I'm told the Twitterverse if full of rubbish
but most of us are really quite refined.

We validate each other's insecurities
and brag about the gadgets that we've bought.
We laugh out loud at every hint of jolliness
and try to self promote without being caught.

CHORUS: Cause now you're no one if you're not on Twitter…

Thanks to the Girl Riot who told me about this, after spotting (what else) a tweet from Alan Wolk.

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

more mad women

Having been called out for omissions in my last post, by readers as authoritative as David Ogilvy, I'm adding a few names to my ad hoc compilation of Ad Broads Who Made History:

Paula Green began her career working as a copywriter for Seventeen magazine. After two years helping boost the young magazine's image and trying to change stereotypical perceptions of young women, she moved to the LC Gumbinner Agency. Then, noticing the work coming out of Doyle Dane Bernbach, she applied there and was hired as a copywriter. She was assigned to Avis and was appalled by their current campaign. It was, in her words, "a three-page logo." At the time, rental cars were shoddily cared for and maligned by customers who had to use them. Her first "We Try Harder" ads "were really creating an operating manual for the company saying you had to give customers a clean car, windshield wipers had to work, cars had to have a full tank of gas." When she extended the campaign to "Avis is only No. 2 in rent a cars. So why go with us?" many in the agency objected, feeling that No. 2 was a put-down. Green sent the research department to airports, etc. with the ads on 3 x5 index cards. Researchers came back to report that 50% of the people thought that No. 2 meant "not as good as." Bernbach asked, "What about the other 50%?", thus saving the campaign which, based on research results, they were able to sell to the client.

Green went on to become group head at DDB and its first woman creative management supervisor. By the end of 1969, having reached the highest position available to her there, she left to start her own agency, Green Dolmatch, partnering with her husband Murray Dolmatch. After eight years, the agency became Paula Green advertising, responsible for campaigns like "Goya Oh Boy-a!" for Goya foods in the 1980s. Her ad philosophy? "Girls smiling seductively from bathtubs appeal to art directors, not women customers."

Mary Fillius, a copywriter at the Weintraub agency wrote the Maidenform campaign that, over at Sterling Cooper, is getting knickers in a twist. The campaign was launched in August 1949 and ran for decades. It was instrumental in transforming unmentionables into undergarments.

One of David Ogilvy's key copywriters was Riva Fine who worked with art director Bill Binzen on Schweppes in the 1950s. They used the company's colorful chief executive in the ads--Edward Whitehead, a former Royal Navy Officer from WW2.

Rita Selden was a copywriter in Phyllis Robinson's group at Doyle Dane Bernbach. One day she was walking past the office of art director Helmut Krone and saw him staring at a photo of a VW. He told her that, somehow, it would make a great ad. Although the car (which wasn't called a Beetle until 1967) looked perfect to the naked eye, it had been rejected by VWs strict inspection team. "Why don't you just say 'Lemon'?" Selden suggested.

who is the real @peggyolson? look it up in the library

The Ad World depicted in AMC's Mad Men (and recently extended, in a brilliant move, to Twitter) depicts a world in which men were the only masters of the universe (clients don't count; sorry Rachel Menken…er, Katz.) That depiction is largely accurate; however, there were a few women who climbed out of the steno pool, who managed, like Peggy, to make their marks as copywriters. The New York Science Library pays a tribute to them in an exhibition through September 26, Real Men and Women of Madison Avenue. The show highlights the achievements of creative ad legends, including women working just across town from Peggy, fighting their way up ladders at Sterling Cooper's competitors.

Reva Korda began her career in the 1940s by writing copy for Bernice Fitz-Gibbon who ran the art department at Gimbels. "Fitz" was a stickler for good copy, having created an empire with enduring lines like "It's smart to be thrifty" for Macy's and "Nobody, but nobody, undersells Gimbels." Seeking to hire only the best, Fitz had placed an ad for "Phi Beta Kappa English majors" which Korda, a Phi Beta from Hunter answered. In 1951, David Ogilvy, noticing Korda's work in The NY Times, stole her away and by 1962 she was a creative director at Ogilvy and promoted to senior vice president. She made her mark on ad history with the "Schweppervescence" campaign for Schweppes Tonic, putting crowns on the heads of Imperial Margarine eaters and her work for Dove and Pepperidge Farms.

Phyllis Robinson began in Grey's promotions department in the 1940s writing fashion for Bill Bernbach, and moved with him to be a staffer at Doyle Dane Bernbach when he opened the doors in June 1949. Bernbach credited Robinson with helping to professionalize advertising and lauded her ability to differentiate between "creative work" and "creative acrobatics." At DDB, Robinson teamed up with another Bernbach acolyte from Grey, Bob Gage, to form what is believed to be the first official copywriter/art director team. (Prior to this, art directors were thought of as mere layout men.) Robinson's work for Ohrbach's, Levy's bread and Polaroid won her a spot in the Copywriters Hall of Fame. One of the cub writers she supervised was Mary "Bunny" Wells.



Mary Wells spent time writing fashion copy at Macy's, then as copy supervisor at McCann, before moving to DDB in 1957 where she rose to associate copy chief and head of new-products development. There, she made her mark with copy for the French tourist office ("The Basque and his beret are never separated") and a Warner's girdle ("Slip into something comfortable and take two inches off your waistline.") In 1963, Marion Harper hired her away to Jack Tinker Partners which she helped transform from a think tank into a functioning creative shop. When Tinker had a heart attack, she expected to succeed him as president, but two male partners threatened to resign rather than work for a woman. A few months later, Wells left with the $6 million Braniff account and in 1966 started her own agency with two other Tinker renegades: Dick Rich and Stewart Greene. They shocked the airline industry and jolted Braniff sales by painting their planes pastel and putting their "stewardesses" in Pucci uniforms. ("End of the Plain Plane.") A year later, Wells married Braniff's president, but soon dropped his $10 million account to take on TWA's $14.6 million business. (Perplexing many in the industry, they remained happily wed.) Wells also did groundbreaking work for Benson & Hedges and Alka Seltzer. By 1969, Mary Wells was reported to be the highest-paid executive in advertising, making $250,000 a year. (And what will Roger Sterling and Bertram Cooper think of that?)



Shirley Polykoff grew up in Brooklyn, the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants. "It was from magazine advertisements that we learned how to be truly American", she said and began her career by writing copy as a teenage secretary at Harper's Bazaar, then for a series of department and variety stores, including Bamberger's and Kresge. In 1955, she became Foote, Cone & Belding's only woman copywriter and was assigned to a tiny Bristol-Myers division known as Clairol. (Like Peggy Olson, she got the account because it was felt that only she would understand the product.) At the time, only 7 percent of American women dared dye their hair, mainly actresses, models and other "fast" women. When her line "Does she…or doesn't she?" was first presented at the agency, her male colleagues tried to kill it, claiming the line was too suggestive. Polykoff added the reassuring tag, ''Hair color so natural only her hairdresser knows for sure.'' The headline soon became a national catchphrase and dyed hair went from déclassé to de rigueur. Miss Polykoff went on to become FCB's lone female executive vice president and the 1967 Advertising Woman of the Year.

So, hang in there, Peggy. The future looks promising.

where is @don_draper when you need him?

Like many twitterers on this circuit, I was followed by Mad Men. At first it felt strange to receive updates from fictional characters. (@Don_Draper: Taking Betty to Birdland tonite to hear Coltrane or @Peggy_Olson: Hope Belle Jolie account is ok. Worries me actually.) But I found they integrated seamlessly into my stream of tweets (because who isn't a fictional character in cyberspace) and I began to look forward to their 140-character dispatches of daily doings and angsts circa 1962. I even began to interact with them directly, exhanging a friendly banter of girl talk with @Betty_Draper (who promised to try Jackie's milliner at Berdorf's.)

What brilliant marketers are folks at AMC, I thought. First, Sterling Cooper business cards as promos. Then, wrapping the Times Square shuttle (a train Draper takes). Now, they reach outside the (tv) box again to send their characters into Twitterville, connecting with (and recruiting) fans, maximizing entertainment value of their content, pushing it further, making it even more seductive-- which will make the show more seductive to advertisers, too. Of course (thought I) folks who display masterful grasp of last century adland would prove equally conversant with present-day marketing opps.



But, alas, I was wrong. I woke up this morning to a post from Alan Wolk reporting that most Twittering Mad accounts have been suspended. Why? No official word yet, but MG Siegler writing for VentureBeat reports that AMC invoked the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to convince Twitter’s support team to suspend the accounts. (As of this posting, you can still tweet @Betty_Draper--perhaps, in keeping with sexist attitudes of the era, execs at AMC don't consider her a threat?)

I'm a content provider myself, so I understand how producers could be ruffled by others co-opting the characters they've worked hard to create. But rather than acting impetuously, hostiley, stupidly shutting down a growing opportunity to extend its fan base, shouldn't someone in marketing recognize the potential and put itinerant Mad Twitterers on the payroll, or sustain the effort in-house? Surely Don Draper would get it, if he was around. Despite the fact that, as devoted fans know, he'll be turning 79 on September 25.

UPDATE
Good news for some, annoying news for others: Nudged by Deep Focus, AMC's digital agency of record, Man Men's' Twitter accounts have been reinstated and the cast has resumed tweets.

twitter bully still at large-UPDATE

Blogger Ariel Waldman has been harassed on Twitter by a cyberbully since June 2007, but Twitter refuses to do anything about it because:

Unfortunately, although [this user’s] behavior is admittedly mean, [s/he] isn’t...doing anything illegal.

UPDATE- Read latest Twitter responses and AW's take on situation in new post.

Too bad Waldman isn't a parent of a middle schooler in New York City where she'd apparently wield more cyber clout. Middle school students at several schools across the city were dismayed this week when their Facebook accounts were unexpectedly closed, in conjunction with the shut-down by "an unknown force" of a pseudo-Gossip Girl site started by an anonymous 8th grader calling herself Miss ITK (Miss In The Know). The blog catalogued the class of 2012 into A lists and B lists causing consternation and tears among 8th grade girls--and their parents. (Cache of a blog page still here, as of posting.)

A spokeswoman for Facebook, Malorie Lucich, said accounts are disabled if terms of service are in violation.

See, Twitter? For the sake of abiding members, other providers take TOS seriously.