Branding

Wieden + Kennedy, Tokyo just launched a redesign of their website - www.wktokyo.jp. Looks pretty cool, but what’s really interesting about the site is the wealth of neighborhood information that it provides through their custom google maps/links sections.
Here’s a clip from the customized map page:

They’ve also put up a blog - www.wktokyo.jp/blog/

Twitter is buzzing with the news that last night the Twitter accounts for Mad Men characters Don Draper (@don_draper) and Peggy Olson (@peggyolson) were taken down. At first the outrage was pointed towards the folks over at Twitter, with reports stating that it was because these accounts fall under their new spam restrictions - The accounts were not real people saying real things (yet all were promoting a similar product).

Twitter employees fired back that it wasn’t their initiative, but rather a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice issued by AMC. Apparently these twitter accounts were NOT all part of a marketing campaign for the show! I will say this, each of the accounts (there’s more than just Don and Peggy on Twitter) seems to have stuck to the character they were portraying. While AMC has the legal right to protect their brand, why ruin a good campaign? Especially one that is free?

Ben Kessler found the rest of the cast who had Twitter accounts and posted them on his blog. They are:

and

- Apparently a new Peggy Olson account has been created, this time with an underscore in her name. One of her first ‘tweets’ was in regards to the account suspension:

MG Siegler from VentureBeat was the first to report of the DMCA takedown:

Twitter has responded back to me on the issue. Apparently it wasn’t a spam issue at all, but rather a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice that Twitter’s support team responded to, co-founder Biz Stone tells me. I guess AMC didn’t like others playing the roll of its Mad Men characters besides the actors who play them on TV.

I wonder if this was the inspiration for the influx of fake Mad Men accounts (taken from SomeEcards.com):

I don’t think this is the end of this story….

UPDATE! Mario Parisé from the StrategicText blog has come forward to reveal that he has been twittering under the Paul Kinsey (@paul_kinsey) account. It is still (as of 12:45pm EST) online. He’s got a great post about it over on his site. Go check it out.

With the recent premier of season 2 of critically acclaimed AMC series, Mad Men, comes an interesting post on the AMC blog. Linda Schupack, Senior Vice President of Marketing for AMC, has posted a generalized synopsis of the strategy behind this year’s campaign:

We decided to place Don in Grand Central both for its iconic stature and as a transition between worlds: Work and home, the familiar and the new. And, because Don continues to wrestle with issues of secrets, identity and change, we wanted to place Don amidst a blurred almost chaotic crowd. But he stands still, in high relief.

Included in the post are samples of the sketches used to help guide the creative design for the campaign. Above is a sketch of the look and feel that they ended up using for one of their print ads. Linda Schupack explains that,

Once we decide on an idea, we do sketches. Many sketches. And these sketches will be our guide as we figure out what to photograph.

After shooting the backdrop at Grand Central Station and then the crowd/Jon Hamm in Los Angeles, the shots were combined to comprise the final product (as seen below).

This morning WPP announced that the new agency they have been trying to build as part of their agreement with Dell, originally called Project Da Vinci, now has an official title………..

They’re calling it: (cue the drumroll)

Enfatico.

From the press release:

“As a next generation agency with a diverse mix of marketing services and talent – all uniquely orchestrated to drive value for Dell and future clients – we believe Enfatico effectively captures what makes us distinct,” commented agency CEO Torrence Boone.

Well Mr. Boone, you’ve got one thing right… that name definitely makes you “distinct.” Way to come up with a name that sounds even worse than the original Project Da Vinci idea. It just reaks of a group of creatives that either gave up on the choosing a name and let the stoned intern have a shot at it, or you guys take yourselves waaaaaay too seriously.

good luck with that.

Whoever designed the packaging (the contents of the lighter are the dvds) for Season One of the Mad Men should win an award. This not only looks great but fits in perfectly with the series. Kudos.

….A few days old and taken from http://bullshit.tumblr.com - The Triumph of Bullshit.. but I couldn’t let this one go without a re-post.