As I’ve tweeted ad nauseum, one of my favorite podcasts on the Web is American Copywriter. John January and Tug McTighe always give a smart and seriously funny perspective on anything that’s so cool or lame in the world of advertising that it’s worth discussing. One thing John recently pointed me to (via the AC blog) is that Mad Man has a really active and interesting presence on Twitter. All of the major characters have a feed where they’re describing their days and interacting with each other as they would in real life, or at least the “real life” created by the show’s writers. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen anything like it before.

John says, “Last Sunday morning, well before the episode aired, @don_draper tweeted: "Wishing I didn't have to spend most of my Sunday at the office." It was later revealed in the show, of course, that Draper had to head into the city to work on the American Airlines pitch. Nice. It's an interesting use of Twitter, and one I'm content to play along with to see what more they can do with the highly personal medium.”

This clever hack of Twitter creates a micro-drama compelling enough to make me want to tune in and really see the full scope of what’s happening in the character’s lives. Even more than that, I’m impressed by the level of engagement the characters have with the community. When I followed them, they followed me back. When I tweeted about one of the characters, another character quickly tweeted back:

The funniest aspect of all of this is seeing genuinely old school ad guys using a shiny new platform like Twitter. In fact, the tweet that prompted Bud Melman’s response was:

Sal has since updated his background so there are no obvious typewriters in his background giving away how impossible it would be for these characters to actually use Twitter. But who knows, maybe there was a micro-typewriting trend on Madison Ave in the 60’s that my college professors failed to mention.

In any event, props to whoever is behind this (the jury’s still out on whether this is the work of the show’s producers). It’s good fodder for any present day Ad/Marketing/PR man or woman who’s tentative about checking out what’s happening on Twitter and joining in. If these pre-laptop, pre-mobile Mad Men can figure out a way to tweet between pitches, there’s really no excuse not to.