AMC’s Mad Men is a favorite new show for many of us in the advertising and marketing industry. The writing, acting, and attention to detail is impeccable. The unbridled chauvinism, excessive drinking, blatant arrogance, and egotistic swagger of most of the male characters is probably a tad dramatized but mostly a believable portrayal of the times. It’s shocking and delicious at once and completely entertaining. My dark side begs for a second helping after every episode.

The much anticipated premier of the second season a few weeks ago did not disappoint. Picking up a couple of years in the timeline after the the end of season one, it was loaded with all the stuff that made the first season a hit; tension, drama, dark humor, unexpected turns - oh, and the priceless quotes from our fearless and flawed hero Don Draper; “We need advertising for people without a sense of humor.”

The part that may have impressed me the most about the premier was surprisingly not the show itself, but the one (yes, one) commercial break that split the first and second half of the episode. Sponsored by BMW, it was a one minute, documentary-style spot highlighting ad legend Martin Puris’ timeless contribution to the luxury auto makers’ brand. Puris created the tagline “the ultimate driving machine” for BMW over 35 years ago and it’s still used today. It’s a very impressive piece of trivia, the spot was well put together and it was completely relevant to the audience of the show; advertising enthusiasts.

We keep hearing more and more about the impact of relevance in advertising effectiveness. So many co-factors need to be considered in the process of planning highly relevant advertising so that the right message can be delivered at the right time in the right place. New, exciting methods for research and modeling are surfacing, such as customer journey mapping, that help expose opportunities for more relevant advertising. We have seen, for a handful of years now, progressive thinkers like the folks at Crispin, Porter & Bogusky breaking away from the conventional confines of advertising in pursuit of higher relevance and higher impact. No doubt their attention-getting campaigns have caused planning, creative and media departments to collaborate in ways they never had before. (Okay, those guys probably don’t have departments.)

In any event, the basic things you need to know to deliver highly-relevant advertising is who you’re talking to, where they are, and what their interests are - all in the context of their mindset at the time of message delivery. Digital media has a distinct advantage over traditional media in that it allows for the capture of more data points that allow advertisers to make intelligent judgements about what, when and where to deliver advertising messages and to whom. And often, the recipient has expressly requested to receive the messages, either through an opt-in program, by entering a search query, etc., transforming a potentially annoying intrusion into helpful, welcome information. I personally enjoy being a part of a movement that is helping change the face of advertising by making good information more readily available to people that want it, and wasting less of people’s time (and advertisers’ dollars) by forcing unwanted messages on the wrong people at the wrong time. Viva technology.