The Mad Men of Hilton

I like Mad Men, and I like the Hilton family of hotels, so you think I'd be happy that they're cross-promoting the hell out of each other. Or, you'd think that it wouldn't have the end result of pissing me off. Guess again.

I stayed at a Hilton recently, and booked my room under the "Mad Men" rate. That entered me into the drawing for some crazy prize at the Waldorf Astoria. (A cheaper way to enter is to write your name & address on a card and mail it to them.) So I show up to the hotel on a Monday, hoping to catch a Mad Men re-run on AMC. 'Cause they're such cross-promoting buddies, and I'm staying at the Mad Men rate and all.

Now, in the perfect promotional world, when you stay at the Mad Men rate, they'd have a little DVD of the most recent episode burned and available for you to view. But, that seems difficult and legally questionable. They'd ideally have worked that sort of detail out in their promotional agreement, but whatever. So that didn't happen.

In a merely adequate promotional world, when you stay at a hotel chain that has a big cross-promotion with a television show, you'd expect that hotel to have the channel carrying that television show in its TV lineup.

Nope.

So, I got a 1 in 30 billion chance of winning a prize, and I didn't get to watch Mad Men. I had to wait until I got home.

Great promotion, Hilton. Ol' Conrad would be proud of you.

Check out the rest of my blog!