Series 4, the new season of Mad Men, the cult drama about life in a 1960s New York ad agency, premiers on US TV broadcast networks tonight.

There’s not a lot that a 50-year old creative agency could teach about social media you’d have thought. But you’d be wrong.

Characters from the show have been tweeting in the run up to the launch of the new series. Its a delightful social media execution that is completely on-message for Mad Men.

Here are a couple of tweets that I’ve exchanged with the show’s Don Draper and Peggy Olson.

Unfortunately the show’s promotional strategy doesn’t extend to its digital rights management. Anyone outside the US is blocked from viewing trailers for the new show via the Mad Men web site.

In the UK, Mad Men which won a BAFTA for best international show this year, is broadcast on BBC3, but there’s no news yet of when the new series will air.

Update: Thanks to CorpComm’s Helen Dunne for straightening me out this story. The Mad Men Twitter feeds are independent of the TV show and have been in existence for a couple of years. Peggy Olsen’s tweets won their author a Shorty award last year.