Mad Men's charming, sad and mysterious Betty and Don Draper. Photo by Frank Ockenfels 3, courtesy AMC.
The AMC series Mad Men may be about advertising’s golden age, but it’s also illustrating the power of the industry’s digital age.
It seems fitting that a show about ads should woo us with, well, ads. No marketing blitz in recent memory has been so multifaceted and successful.
Actors promoting Mad Men in Columbus Circle, NYC.
First there were Facebook promos hawking the season premier, which Tivos across the country recorded Sunday. Then, there was the viral marketing of MadMenYourself.com, a site that lets you dress up as a Mad Men character and post the illustration to your Facebook and Twitter accounts.
In New York, the show went a step further this weekend and hired actors to parade around Columbus Circle in 1960s garb. Other PR reps passed out fliers on street corners, and the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) projected mid-century advertisements on the side of a building. Enthusiastic viewers then gathered to watch the premier together in Times Square.
I’d never had an inclination to watch the show. But all this prompted me to buy the season 1 DVDs to see what the fuss was about. For all its clever advertising, so far Mad Men has succeeded in making me mad at men. I know it’s fiction, and I tend to take my TV shows too seriously, but the unflinching look at life and, especially, sexism in 1960 makes me want to run out and reread The Feminine Mystique.
Actresses promoting Mad Men in Columbus Circle, NYC.
I’m pushing through the episodes because Donald Draper is such a mystery, and I’ve heard characters in the current season, set in 1963, will start to seek liberation after some awful events like JFK’s and MLK’s assassinations. (This New York Times article does a good job of explaining why a show about a time so antiquated is so relevant right now.)
As the show suggests, the sales department can only get you so far. In the end, viewers will stay tuned if Mad Men‘s creativity lives up to the hype.
