A social-marketing campaign to promote the AMC hit series Mad Men allows users to create cartoon avatars of themselves. The goal was to increase viewership for the third season of the show from two to three million. In the end, 1.3 million new viewers tuned in and more than 600,000 avatars were created prior to the first episode of the show. Find out the lessons learned.

Speaking at  IAB Social Media Marketplace on Monday, Ian Schafer, CEO of Deep Focus, offered a case study of the social-marketing campaign his firm did to promote the AMC hit series Mad Men.

The campaign allowed users to create cartoon avatars of themselves. The goal was to increase viewership for the third season of the show from two to three million. In the end, 1.3 million new viewers tuned in and more than 600,000 avatars were created prior to the first episode of the show.

It's not too late to Mad Men yourself. The campaign was so successful, AMC continues to run it here.

Emily Molitor of Smart Blog on Social Media summed up the Schafer's method and takeaway.

Method to the madness:

1. Deep Focus and AMC did the math.  They figured out how many site visitors they would need to get their desired level of sharing.
2. They understood that customers are media channels too.
3. The campaign was a riff on an idea that came from one fan, freelance illustrator Dyna Moe, who was “MadMenningHerself” already on her personal blog.  They hired her to do all the artwork on the avatar site.
4. “Social Media is inherently narcissistic,” said Schafer. “People love to create versions of themselves.”
5. They had confidence that they could turn this echo chamber inside out.

Takeaways for all marketers:

1. “Know your audience, almost in the biblical sense,” advised Schafer.  Understand who they are, what they do, what media they like and their hobbies.
2. Reverse engineer success.  Understand how many good users you need to spread the word and create a successful social campaign based upon your knowledge of your audience, what the ideal user looks like.
3. Make it easy for your best users to bring others into the fold.