Jaan Kanellis’s last blog post..Back To Work and Happy About It?

This is exactly what I LOVE about social media. I’ve been a marketer for 20 years, but there haven’t been any significant game-changing moments until just the past few years. Even online advertising was just a model from other media plopped onto the Interwebz.

It’s truly thrilling to be a marketer when you can discover, create and mold new paradigms.

@CarriBugbee

Carri Bugbee’s last blog post..How to find us

I follow another fiction character on Twitter, Barney Stinson from How I Met Your Mother (@brocode) – a vehicle to promote the book Bro Code ‘written by’ said fictional character. I find the sitcom hilarious, and the character brand extension on Twitter provides me with occasional chuckles – and has increased the likelihood I will buy the book for a friend remarkably like the comic character in some ways.

As a member of the D&D generation, I have no problem with marketers ‘role-playing’ characters from products and programmes – it’s quite fun, and provides a level of interaction beyond static ads, minisites and videos. I think it’ll become a common promotional tool in the new Social Media age, and I imagine it will be a very effective one. I ‘play characters’ on behalf of a couple of clients too, although they’re not from TV programmes.

We live in a remarkable time as the rules of engagement online are being rewritten on a near daily basis, with fantastic innovative game-changers appearing regularly. I love it!

Viva l’Innovation!

Rob

Frank Reed’s last blog post..Internet Marketing’s Fresh 24

Whether or not people choose to follow and interact with this character on MySpace or Twitter lets communication professionals know a little more about their consumers.

Breean Miller’s last blog post..is yelp just for complaining or is it useful?

Alex Peerenboom’s last blog post..Viral Marketing: A Good Lesson

As I stated in the post I know there must be a market for this but because I am not someone who would be engaged it’s a bit hard to comprehend. As a marketer, however, it doesn’t matter what personal bias is held. if it works and it is above board then it needs to be considered. That being said I certainly know where to send someone who may benefit from this approach.

If AMC had asked for their characters back or had said that they needed creative input into your characterization what would you do? I suspect that they simply didn’t think about it and since they were ‘lucky’ that someone like yourself took good care of things they figured if it ‘ain’t broke don’t fix it’.

@siobahn speaks of an entire movie that was made but that is a very different thing than having a living breathing character that is in ‘dialogue’ with fans so I am not sure the comparison holds up.

Word of warning to creative types who would not want this kind of creative license to be taken is to ensure you can lock down your social media handles as much as possible if you are not willing to allow this kind of artistic license with your work.

Thanks again, Carri. Looking forward to hearing fro myou in the future as your agency develops.

Frank Reed’s last blog post..Internet Marketing’s Fresh 24

Some refer to what we did as “fan fiction.” I hadn’t previously heard of that phrase either, but come to find out, fan fiction actually has a long, rich history. From people who dress up to attend Star Trek conventions, to those who write complete chapters or screenplays of their favorite books and movies on the Internet, people have apparently been doing this for decades.

There are even professors at MIT who study it: Henry Jenkins (http://henryjenkins.org/) spoke at SXSW very eloquently on the subject and Josh Greene spoke at Inverge about the blending of fan fiction and audience participation last year at Inverge. You can see the entire video of Josh’ presentation here: http://supportingcharacters.com/madmen/ (scroll down, right side). It’s really quite interesting.

So, why not have entertainment on Twitter? It occupies nothing more than a few seconds a day for someone to read a posting by their favorite character. It’s just fun! Who has too much of that?

Of course, for me, it was neither fan fiction nor brand hi-jacking. I just wanted to find new ways to use Twitter as a marketing vehicle. I figured if AMC had wanted to promote their show in this way, they would have done it themselves – or asked us for their characters back. But neither happened.

They might have done that if we had damaged their brand. But we didn’t. Most of us who tweeted as Mad Men characters took it VERY seriously. I treated it like a REAL JOB during the season and for awhile thereafter. As I mentioned in the video, without doing that, I didn’t see how I’d glean any actionable data or insights. And as a marketer, that was my top priority. That, and to have some fun too!

And for the record, I have never and will never tweet out of character for Peggy Olson. I wouldn’t do that for any kind of money. I’ve never even used @PeggyOlson to tweet @CarriBugbee. That would just be wrong.

Carri Bugbee’s last blog post..How to find us

This is nothing new. Carri just did what already exists. It is fan fiction. Fans of starwars created a whole movie that was made on desktop computer and shot with hand helds based on their fan fiction. George Lucas probably could of sued but he praised the fans for their creation.

I really don’t see this as similar to domain squatting. Maybe if Ms. Bugbee grabbed the MadMen twitter handle and used it for advertising, there might be a similarity, but no she was a fan of the show and used twitter to express her own creativity, which probably ended up benefiting the MadMen brand.

Out of her experience she learned that twitter characters can be powerful marketing tools and based a business model around it. Now THAT’s what you gotta love about the USA.

Siobhan’s last blog post..Week 29 – Milo

Marci probably hit the nail on the head. I have had people ask the same question about what the writer must feel in this situation. AMC could obviously care less. They just want people engaged in the show and they are not concerned about the integrity of the character or the writer’s concerns. Imagine trying to write for the next season and thinking that you need to check in with the Twitterverse version of your creation. Just seems odd to me.

Excuse me while I go eat my cold porridge alone in my hovel in the moss covered woods.

Frank Reed’s last blog post..Internet Marketing’s Fresh 24

“What I see is someone who basically hijacks a social media handle (akin to domain squatting), takes over the character’s ‘life’ on Twitter without any guidance from anyone related to the show and wins an award.”

I’m a writer, and if I were to create a character as rich as any on Mad Men (yes, I watch it and love it) and someone “took that character over” into some extension of life as his/her own, I’d be very unhappy, not to mention investigating the legality of it.

The writers work very hard to create those characters in every detail — who they are, their backstories, their habits, their motivations and consequences. If you create a character in writing, isn’t that character part of your copyright? Or can any character from TV, movies or fiction be taken over by someone with their own agenda?

I’m left wondering: is this marketing or is it stealing?

Carri simply caught on that it would be interesting to extend this into Twitter, and hey, the narrow little demographic responded favorably. She saw opportunity and took it.

In this age of self-appointed creativity and publishing power, what’s so wrong with that?

Tom Bennett’s last blog post..Are you a Gear or a Being?

The rest of us will market to the 6 million people on Twitter, plus the billions of other people on the planet.

Twitter is one channel. It’s lazy to focus on one cutting edge market when billions of people don’t use it.

Michelle Greer’s last blog post..Gratuitous ?Life of Brian? Clip! Hurrah!