Veteran transmedia storytellers Campfire previously designed campaigns for programs such as Game of Thrones and Bag of Bones. In those campaigns, as in the current one for Hunted, Campfire relies on a multi-pronged strategy to spread word of mouth about the program and increase brand awareness of the channel on which the program airs. As such, the campaigns combine an interactive web-based component, a physical object sent to opinion leaders, and, in the case of Game of Thrones and Hunted, targeted, local events. All elements of the campaign synch to provide potential viewers with an immersive experience of the program’s characters and storyworld.

The specific elements that comprise the Hunted campaign have been analyzed by multiple media outlets such as ARG Net, Huffington Post, and by Myles McNutt, so I will highlight only a few relevant features. The online component at ByzantiumTests.com consists of personality tests that supposedly decide if the participant is fit to work for Byzantium Security. As one might expect, it doesn’t matter how one responds to these tests—in the end, all participants are deemed to be part of the 1% that qualifies for employment at Byzantium (nevertheless, it is worth playing through all tests to get to the very last, the baffling outcome of which leads one to ask “but how did they do that?”). I found it interesting that the online component asks viewers to join Byzantium when the company is marked as an antagonist in the series itself, but as I previously explained regarding The Hunger Games, this strategy invites viewers into the diegesis while simultaneously not revealing too much in advance to the program’s premiere.

The physical component of the Hunted campaign takes the form of a wooden puzzle that has a secret compartment for a password-protected flash drive. After solving the fragmented anagram burned into the wood, one has access to exclusive materials. Campfire’s goal of sending out the puzzles to the lucky few—or shall we say, the lucky 1% of television viewers privileged enough to receive mail from Campfire—is also to spread the word about Hunted (full disclosure: I received one of those puzzles, too, and am presumably doing my part by writing this post). After all, as Campfire’s Creative Director Steve Coulson told me, an important goal of this transmedia campaign is to generate word-of-mouth buzz that connects a quality drama like Hunted with Cinemax. The dual goal of the Hunted transmedia campaign is thus not only to recruit new viewers for Cinemax, but also the elevate viewers’ opinion of Cinemax’s brand (Campfire created a campaign with similar goals for A&E and its Stephen King mini-series Bag of Bones).

Photo Credit: Armando Gallardo

So far, all of this is fairly standard in the world of transmedia storytelling. However, the last component of the Hunted campaign stands out. As part of a localized event, posters promoting Byzantium Security appeared in the area around Wall Street in time for the one-year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street. In contrast to the online component, which is easily identified as promotional material for Hunted because of its copyright disclaimer, the ads did not have any overt link to the program. Indeed, many people mistook the posters for real ads advertising security for the 1%.

The above photo circulated widely on Twitter and blogs following the OWS anniversary. The revelation that the Byzantium ads were “just” for a TV program didn’t necessarily improve opinions about the ad (see, for example, the reactions on OWS’s Facebook page). One could say that this reaction was a win for Campfire nevertheless since Hunted and Cinemax became part of a passionate conversation. However, seeing the ads either as marketing triumph or terrible co-option of activist language is too simple, especially because the program itself raises the question of what it means to work for a company that protects the 1%.  For me, ambivalence might be a better term for describing this mash-up of activist language and television promotion. While the ads might not promote a security firm for the 1%, they promote a program that targets those who can and will spend the additional monthly fee for Cinemax; a group we might imagine as the “1%” of television viewers. While the actual number of subscribers is larger than one percent, the discourse of quality television depicts viewers of premium cable drama as the elite among TV viewers (as suggested by Michael Z. Newman and Elena Levine in Legitimating Television).

There is also the question of commercial television’s role in contributing to a conversation about the issues addressed by OWS, like global finance. Is television depoliticized, as Alternet’s Sarah Jaffe observes, or is TV another venue in which this conversation happens? The first episode suggests that Hunted will follow the usual approach of commercial television and present the conflicts surrounding Byzantium in a personalized way, namely as a conflict between main character Sam Hunter and Byzantium, her employers, rather than offering a systemic critique of Byzantium as cog in the machine of global finance. Despite this personalization, it seems too easy to divorce a program like Hunted from the larger discourse surrounding OWS. Perhaps the ultimate achievement of the Byzantium ads is that it forces us to look more closely at how both the commercialized rhetoric of transmedia and the activist rhetoric of OWS engage in a conversation about the 1%.

AMC was reportedly demanding that future episodes of Mad Men run several minutes shorter to make room for more advertisements, that more explicit product integration be accommodated, and that per-episode costs be reduced by eliminating some cast members.  Mad Men is a program narratively set in an advertising agency.  It has been used by AMC as a fulcrum in the cable channel’s attempts to transition from an exclusively carriage-fee to an increasingly advertiser-based revenue stream.  So these demands are not surprising.

On the other hand, Mad Men signals for AMC the switch from “classic” movie programming to a growing palette of well publicized and critically well received original productions.  Mad Men‘s first four seasons have garnered vast acclaim, won multiple awards, attracted new (and slightly younger) viewers, and put AMC on Madison Avenue’s map.  One might say it has successfully made over AMC, producing a newly identifiable and desirable brand (for advertisers and certain viewers).  So the fact that a settlement was ultimately reached and Mad Men will have three more seasons (albeit with “contained” budgets, two-minute-shorter episodes, and more prominent product placement) is also not surprising.

What would have been surprising would have been if AMC had refused to renew the program and simply cancelled the show absent its demands being met.  But here’s the thing:  it would have been surprising, but no longer unthinkable.

At one time a network might have been grateful or felt indebted or at least tried to maintain the tent pole foisted by such an important show for as long as possible (think of NBC’s outrageous offerings to Warner Bros to keep ER and Friends on the air in the 1990s).  Things have changed.  It is no longer impossible to imagine that AMC might move on, leaving its signature show behind.  As it is, new episodes will not be seen until March 2012, 14 or 15 months after the most recent episode.  AMC has 4 other new shows to debut this year.  And Mad Men has never had stellar ratings.  It is not even currently the highest rated show on AMC (The Walking Dead has it beat).  Most important, however, it comes down to this:  so far as AMC is concerned, the show’s work is done.  AMC is now an established presence in original programming and advertising.  Thank you very much.

Mad Men meanwhile finds itself in an increasingly common position for primetime programming, one of indeterminate value.  To remain valuable to AMC—and thus worth renewing—Mad Men must remain difficult to see anywhere else and at least a bit less desirable to view after AMC shows it.  That is it must circulate in an economy of scarcity with transient (i.e. diminishing) value.  Thus only clips and promotional footage are legally streamable online, with full episodes restricted to AMC, then for sale on iTunes and months later DVD.  At the same time, however, for Mad Men to put AMC on the map, generate buzz and audiences, attract hip advertisers, and for that matter produce an afterlife—generating both residuals and brand new revenue for its producers beyond AMC, it has to maintain its value and be readily accessible everywhere viewers go.  In other words in addition to being scarce and transient it must also be durable and ubiquitous.  That is why you can Mad Men Yourself, follow people pretending to be characters on Twitter, have bought Barbie Dolls, Banana Republic apparel, DVDs, books, music and many other Mad Men products, and why Weiner went to the fansite “Basket of Kisses” during contract negotiations: maintenance of a vigorous afterlife.

As viewing practices change and the television industry adapts to new economics, even successful programs—much like the labor they employ—are finding their value uncertain, caught between competing and incompatible economies of circulation: scarcity and ubiquity, transience and durability.  While Mad Men‘s future has now been determined, the next successful show’s renewal negotiations are all the more precarious.  Meanwhile, over the final three seasons, Daily Variety suggests that the cast and crew—even “topliners”—are unlikely to receive large raises for their efforts on this hit show, which operates now with “an understanding that producers will have to be creative and judicious with the cast budget going forward.” AMC on the other hand continues its rewarding institutional makeover and Matthew Weiner is set to receive $30 million.