At Monday’s IAB Social Media Marketplace, Ian Schafer, CEO of Deep Focus, offered a case study of the work his firm has done to promote the AMC hit series Mad Men. In so doing, he pointed to a key ingredient to some of the most successful social media campaigns: putting your fans to work on your brand’s behalf.
Schafer’s presentation, a case study on the massively successful Mad Men Yourself social marketing campaign, captivated the brand and agency folks in the room — what more appropriate audience, really? Deep Focus worked with AMC to create a site where fans could create an avatar of themselves as part of the award-winning drama. (That’s my avatar to your right!)
The challenge: AMC came to Deep Focus to devise a plan to engage the Mad Men audience in advance of the premiere of the third season.
The goal: Increase the premiere’s viewership from 2 to 3 million people.
The result? 1.3 million new viewers tuned in for season three’s premiere. In fact, after only one week of the campaign there was a critical mass of hits on the site. 600,000 unique avatars were created leading up to the start of season three.
Method to the madness:
- Deep Focus and AMC did the math. They figured out how many site visitors they would need to get their desired level of sharing.
- They understood that customers are media channels too.
- The campaign was a riff on an idea that came from one fan, freelance illustrator Dyna Moe, who was “MadMenningHerself” already on her personal blog. They hired her to do all the artwork on the avatar site.
- “Social Media is inherently narcissistic,” said Schafer. “People love to create versions of themselves.”
- They had confidence that they could turn this echo chamber inside out.
Takeaways for all marketers:
- “Know your audience, almost in the biblical sense,” advised Schafer. Understand who they are, what they do, what media they like and their hobbies.
- Reverse engineer success. Understand how many good users you need to spread the word and create a successful social campaign based upon your knowledge of your audience, what the ideal user looks like.
- Make it easy for your best users to bring others into the fold.
The Mad Men Yourself campaign has in fact been so successful that it is still running, and Schafer said they plan to use it as part of the campaign to promote season four as well.
I guarantee I wasn’t the only person in the room who Mad Menned themselves after the presentation and then told my network about it!
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What I also love about this case study is it's an about-face to how AMC originally responded when fans began Twittering as their favorite characters in 2008. I think this is a great case of learning from experience and understanding the power of listening, engaging, and empowering brand ambassadors. Bravo to both AMC and Deep Focus on this one!
http://tiffanymonhollon.com/blog/2008/08/27/mad-m…
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I agree, this is a great example of a social media turnaround. Instead of worrying about what their fans were doing in the social space, AMC capitalized on it and developed it into a successful marketing campaign. Thanks for your thoughts Tiffany!
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by sbosm: Mad Men Yourself: The beauty of putting fans to work http://ow.ly/1w1m5...
Hopefully stories like this encourage more creativity and testing in the social web. That being said social media marketing is still challenged by reach if you don't invest in finding ALL the people that should be interested in your content, your product or your brand. We'll publish some ideas around how AMC and Deep Focus can go from 600,000 to 1 million by finding all MadMen fans, cheaply and efficiently.
JB, CEO, Peerset
I agree Mike, I hope that stories like this will encourage more creativity and testing on the social web. You mentioned ideas you have about expanding the reach of a campaign like this–could you elaborate more on that? Where do you think AMC and Deep Focus missed an opportunity?
excellent case study! truly engaged both new and loyal mad men followers into the show.
I was just having a similar discussion to the subject matter of this article last night. A fellow social medeite is rather disenchanted with marketing through social media and believes that is not as beneficial, however your article is certainly a wonderful piece of reverse of ammo, thank you. I believe, and the proof is written above, that utilizing social media marketing and some conventional marketing in tandem is going to be the most profitable avenue for the future.
You might also walk away with some more ideas from this interview series of social media experts. http://www.ourblook.com/topic/social_media.html
Hi Maguire, I am glad you found this article helpful. I think that you make a great point–utilizing social media marketing in conjunction with traditional marketing is a recipie for success. As one panelist at last Monday's IAB Social Media Marketplace put it, "If you aren't on Facebook in 2010, expect to lose your job." That said, neglecting the pre-existing media channels could lead to the same result. Also, thank you for the reference to the interview series, we will give it a look!
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[...] million unique visits to the micro-site, 600,000 avatars created, 1.3 million new viewers for the 3rd season premiere was the ultimate outcome of the [...]
[...] million unique visits to the micro-site, 600,000 avatars created, 1.3 million new viewers for the 3rd season premiere was the ultimate outcome of the [...]
[...] million unique visits to the micro-site, 600,000 avatars created, 1.3 million new viewers for the 3rd season premiere was the ultimate outcome of the [...]