digiday SAMMY Awards — a new award show for the best in social media

This will be a short one — pressed for time this week needing to get extra work done before an upcoming vacation.

But just wanted to alert you to the digiday SAMMY Awards, a new award show that recognizes the best efforts in social media and marketing. (Not to be confused with the Scholar Athlete Milk Mustache of the Year Awards.)

Among the judges are such notables as Scott Monty of Ford and Paul Beck from Ogilvy Worldwide.  Awards are handed out in 12 categories, among them Best Engagement Campaign, Best Social Community and Best Viral Video.  There’s also an award for Best in Show, which sounds a bit peculiar, as I only know that classification from dog shows.

This is the inaugural year of the competition and a gala event will be held to recognize the winners on September 17th at The W Hotel in New York City.  You can find a list of the nominees and winners here.  Unfortunately, there are no links or profiles of the campaigns.  Perhaps something will be prepared for the gala which will then go online.  Hope so.

Twitter for Madmen

I may be the last person who knows about this, but as I’m a fan of Madmen, I just had to share this in case it went by any other Madmen fans who read this blog.

Betty Draper is on Twitter.  (Latest Tweet: “Staring at myself in the toaster.”) So is Roger Sterling, Joan Harris and others.

Since the series started, fans of the show have created fictional Twitter accounts for there favorite Madmen characters.  In fact there are as many as 90, according to Brand Fiction Factory, a company that develops online content for brands and companies engaging with consumers through social media.  Indeed Brand Fiction Factory writers are the real world minds behind 16 of these accounts and they were recently named as a SAMMY Awards finalist in the category Best Twitter Branding Campaign for their Madmen endeavours. If I understand correctly, these writers weren’t paid, but created the content out of their love for the show, so this may be the first time we’ve seen a fan-based campaign recognized in this way.  That is if you can really call it a campaign.

Hat’s off to AMC, the company that produces Madmen, for recognizing the power behind this fan-based enthusiasm to intensify involvement and commitment to the series.  It’s amazing when you think about it.  The fans are extending the fictional narrative beyond television, and AMC has relinquished control and let them go with it.

I imagine Twitter could be used in a similar way for certain iconic brands to fuel the myth and stories that surround them and strengthen the emotional connection with their users.  What would The Marlboro Man tweet about, I wonder?  “Just back from the rodeo, my ass feels like silly putty and I need a bourbon and smoke.” He isn’t on Twitter.  (Although there is a real life cowboy from Nebraska who tweets under the name of marlboroman.) How does Betty Crocker manage to get through her day?  There is a Betty Crocker Twitter feed, but it’s hosted by the brand, not Betty herself.  Any thoughts on other brands that might do this?

By the way, you can also find Betty Draper on Linkedin, and she writes a blog.

Are we all going mad, men and women?