The jig is up. Apparently the entire cast of Mad Men that recently appeared on Twitter, which included Don Draper, Peggy Olson and the rest of the Sterling Cooper crew posting in character while interacting with each other as well as the rest of the Twittersphere, were a bunch of rogues. Responding to a request from AMC under terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Twitter has been systematically hunting down and disabling these accounts.
While some speculated on the front end of this now two-week “campaign” whether or not this was an official part of the show’s promotional efforts, the why and who of the whole deal was quickly overshadowed by the delicious nature of the effort. The voices behind the characters remained faithfully in character (outside the occassional gaffe or historical anachronism) and they were a compelling addition to the Mad Men universe for me.
While it’s a shame, I’m chalking this up as probably one of the most creative uses of Twitter for brand promotion I’ve seen to date. And needless to say, I’m severely disappointed that I’ll no longer be receiving tweets from Joan Holloway.
UPDATE: Read the online confession of @Paul_Kinsey here!
UPDATE 2: Bud Melman in the mailroom may be the sole survivor at this point. I’m digging his LinkedIn profile.
UPDATE 3: The Sterling Cooper gang seems to be coming back from Twitter banishment land. Sounds like a deal must have been struck…
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Way to go, AMC. Nice job destroying fantastic (and free) word of mouth and turning off several fans in the process.
What could possibly be their motivation here? Copyright? Lack of control?
Every time an organization shuts something like this down, all I see is an old man yelling at kids to get off his lawn.
Great analogy, Chris. Even worse, it’s an old man yelling at the kids, who are mowing his lawn for free, to get off the lawn.
Rogues don’t do things the way YOU want them to, they do them the way THEY want to do them. But clearly someone with such a passion for any brand just wants to help. Talking to them directly would have been a MUCH better approach.
Copyright AND control seems to be the motivation. Definitely a misstep on AMC’s part in addressing the issue. Coulda/woulda/shoulda now…
Yet another example of the old media types not understanding new media (social networking), and the power it has to promote, without expending any additional PR budget…
Copyright and control, yes. And the problem with letting kids mow your lawn for free is that you have no guarantee that they’re not going to leave it worse than it was.
a beer sort of girl, honestly, that isn’t immediately clear. There is no easy way to distinguish between someone who’s providing free publicity out of pure fandom and someone who’s providing free publicity only long enough for you to acknowledge them (or actively choose to ignore them, which is acknowledgment in its own way), at which point they can start damaging your brand with your consent.
To put that in a different context, how many “e-card notification” emails have you clicked through in the last year?
AMC’s actions may have been disturbing from a fan’s perspective, but from the perspective of a property owner they were entirely correct. (Except for the use of the DMCA takedown; it’s hard for me to find a way to condone that.)
It’s hard to see this as nothing but a missed opportunity by AMC.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this is a cleverly played tactic by their PR/Marketing dept. You’d just have to keep the legal team completely in the dark that it was AMC employees who were the culprits… instant drama/press.
…and it’s not like sending Twitter a DMC will do anything productive, now that it’s been banned there will undoubtedly be copycats.
Case in point - there is already a replacement Peggy Olson - @peggy_olson
She just added an underscore. I talk a little more about it on my site if you want to see a list of all the other characters who have been “tweeting.” Not all of their accounts were suspended!
Sorry guys… I see this as a case of “identity theft”…
In the case of a fictitous character, the copyright holder owns that identity and has the duty to protect it…
If this was AMC’s own folks playing games then that’s unfortunate and one of the issues regarding “social networking,” you can never be sure who you are talking with.
Rather than being like “kids (innocently) mowing your lawn” it’s like someone masquerading as a close friend in preparation for asking for money.
Minimal control over the blogosphere please!
I agree that AMC was acting completely within their legal rights to do what they did to control and protect their content and brand. Again, it comes down to style points in how they responded. Rather than work with the “rogues” they chose the nuclear option. How unfortunate. What a lost opportunity.
While in the long run it stop me from watching the show and being a fan, it certainly paints a picture of AMC and their failure to grasp the nature of social media and user generated content could mean to ENHANCING their brand.
Reference EA and the Tiger Woods “Jesus Shot” video.
Seriously, I don’t understand this. I tweeted last week about getting the first disc of Season 1 to see what the hype was all about regarding this show. Watched an episode…then saw Peggy following me, I thought it was brilliant! And furthered my interest about the show and its mystique. What a shame.
JAK, what methods of communication do you suggest when this happens in the future? Twitter doesn’t allow reverse lookups of usernames to email addresses. Twitter accounts can be spoofed (case in point, I think). Sending an official email over @message is foolhardy at best, and asking the rogue to friend a Twitter account so that that Twitter account can DM an official email is asking for trust that the rogue might not want to give (because, again, of the spoofing). And if past experience is any gauge, Twitter won’t reveal the identity of an account without the permission of the account holder.
So how should AMC have contacted the rogues to work with them?
Great question, Chris.
First off, it’s apparent that AMC wasn’t engaged in actively listening to begin with. I believe @don_draper started the whole business just before August 13th. Twitter feed histories only go back 9 pages which in Don’s case is 8/13, but I seem to recall things starting up a day or two before then.
So that’s nearly two weeks this has been going on.
For a network that’s concerned about a flagship series that’s seen a ratings drop since starting their second season, you’d thing they’d have their ears to every railroad track they could find. That could be accomplished by setting up a watch feed here or an alert here as a poor man’s solution or engaging with a purveyor of fine tools like this or this on the more robust side of things. So that could have been an earlier trigger for the network to engage with the “Mad Men 9.” In the early going through to a few days ago, all of the characters I followed started following me back on Twitter very quickly, so that direct connection you mention wouldn’t have been too hard to establish.
But let’s say for the sake of argument that the boys proved to be too “churlish” and you couldn’t make that direct connect? Then join the conversation as one of the unclaimed characters. Earn trust by playing along with the rules of the game as established to date and make your direct connects there. If intervention is needed, then you can step in and reveal yourself. If not, your presence is already part of the fabric of the situation, so you can keep close tabs moving forward.
FINAL UPDATES: TV critic Aaron Barnhart has a great post on the legal aspects of the situation. And apparently Twitter flinched pretty hard when AMC first approached them on the situation, prematurely yanking the feeds and creating what must have been one hell of a PR fire drill/headache today for the network.
P.S. Apparently these cats are AMC’s web marketing partner. I’m a little surprised that the rogue campaign slipped by them as well as their client… [Linkage via David Griner]
Continuing the Discussion