The Adnostic

Most marketers, media outlets, or non-humans use twitter as little more than an RSS Feed. NPR posts their headlines:

Amazon posts their specials:

Kind of like how we humans use it, a la 'this is what I'm doing right now,' but without the conversation with other twitter users. It is a rare occasion that brands invest the resources to use twitter to actually have a twitter discourse with their followers who are probably also their customers. CarnivalCruise Lines is a great example of a company that gets the full benefits of using twitter:

Now I have a new non-person to admire its usage of twitter. Actually, non-people. I am amazed by AMC's MadMen's glorious use of twitter. They have given all of their main characters twitter accounts. It started with the master of 60's advertising creativity, Don Draper:

I was a little weirded out by a fictional character being on twitter and FINDING ME, but was intrigued enough to follow him back. (Look at me, I'm calling a fictional character "him." How great is that?) Apparently AMC did a great job at finding all the advertising people on twitter. At first I thought it was a time in a bottle thing, but then he started conversing with the real people on twitter:

Then Joan Holloway came on board:

And Pete Campbell:

And Peggy Olson:

And Bertram Cooper:

Suddenly we were getting a text driven story on top of the televised story. I love it, I'll follow it, and possibly even engage with it because it gives me something in return for doing so. It gives me a little extra that I wouldn't get on TV. It gives me the characters inner monologue so I feel like I know them better and it gives me another story line to follow.

I'm surprised Heroes hasn't gotten on this little bandwagon. Twitter would fit even better with their brand and audience.

Update:

Apparently this wasn't a brilliant promotional campaign by the AMC marketing department, but a very interesting piece of fan fiction. Now AMC has forced Twitter to take down the fake profiles of a few of the key characters, like Peggy Olson and Don Draper, and left the minor players to twitter a story line involving lawyers, the FBI, and some covert organization called AMC.

I'm not sure what the right call would have been - leaving it be or taking it down. I think its a great thing when your fans take liberties when interpreting your brand, but the loss of control is scary. I think that if the writers had been transparent about their lack of association with AMC this wouldn't have blown up in their faces.