You know what’s maybe the best thing about Mad Men? That is, other than the show itself, which started its fourth season Sunday night.

It’s not the fact that the show’s viewership, though comparatively small (2.9 million people watched the season premiere, Mad Men’s biggest audience to date, but still very little in TV terms), is the most educated and highest earning audience in TV. About 48 percent of Mad Men viewers earn six digits.

And it’s not that you’ve got some of the greats of the ad business – like David Ogilvy and Jerry Della Femina – talking about the old days and disagreeing about how accurately Mad Men recaptures them.

It’s that it’s reminding people of advertising’s heyday, an era when creatives and intuition ruled. Now all we need is for the message to sink in. There’s great work yet to be done. Let’s get to it.

Here’s a great example of a company not being afraid to have fun with its brand. Sazon Mas Guapo is a spice blend. An organic, kosher spice blend. Lots of those on the market. And most of them are probably good. But so far we’ve only seen one that interested us enough to make us wanna try it. That’s got nothing to do with the product and everything to do with the mustache and the label (and, OK, yeah, the word zestilicious). We have little doubt that these guys take their product seriously. You have to. They take their brand seriously, too. (This stuff doesn’t happen by accident.) But they don’t take themselves too seriously. And that’s why they’ll win. To put it another way (you may have read this here before): Fun sells.

Here’s a three-part assignment for you. (Relax. All three parts are easy).

Part one: Take a look at The Boston Globe’s coverage of a new Boston Police Department outreach program Operation Hoodsie Cup, being sure to pay attention to where the idea came from.

Part two: Consider what this program is doing. Specifically, think of how much of the problems that exist between city police departments and the people they’re paid to protect originate from the fact that the two sides don’t really know or understand each other. And think about how this simple, inexpensive program can lay the groundwork for change. Not change everything, mind you. But help change perception, which is the first step to changing reality.

Part three: Think about how much easier it can be to accomplish your goals – as an organization or as a business – when you get face-to-face with the people you need to communicate with and you do it with some style and fun. And consider the fact that there are people out there whose job is to help you find ways to put you in close contact with the groups you need to talk to.

That’s it. Or, OK … Part four: Get yourself a Hoodsie Cup. You know you want one.

There’s a tendency to believe that something that works well for one thing will probably work just as well for the next. There’s also a tendency for that belief not to hold up too well in practice – which is why we boil oatmeal and fry pancakes.

Take crowdsourcing, which clearly is an effective tool for creating and refining computer applications and web tools (yes, we’re linking out to Wikipedia on this for a reason). And it appears to work well for other problem-solving oriented tasks. There’s a lot of promise there, which is great.

But there’s a trend developing toward the use of crowdsourcing to create and develop brands. That can work brilliantly if it’s done right. And if it isn’t, well, it could hold up like boiled pancake.

Because here’s the secret of crowdsourcing brands: It’s really just an extension of what those of us in the business have been doing all along. The way you build a successful brand identity and create successful brand strategies is to keep your eye on what’s going on in the world and work your creatives around it. That means everyone participating in a culture is contributing to the creation of every brand you put out into it. Crowdsourcing brings more tuned ears into the mix – giving more professionals input into the process – but it doesn’t really expand the number of voices heard.

So what’s dangerous about that? Nothing. If you’ve got someone running the show who knows not only how to find the best in what the process produces but who has a stake in the success of the branding effort – which is to say a stake in the long-term success of you and your business.

That’s not going to happen if you think you can do it yourself – you know, cast about, find a bunch of people who’ll work on spec and get yourself a brand on the cheap. You’ve got to have someone working with you on strategy, someone who’ll see the process of building your brand through to the end.

You might get lucky and someone might come up with something you think is neat – maybe something that truly is pretty neat. But what does it mean? What’s the strategy behind what you’ve got? What makes you feel relatively sure what you get is going to succeed?

And where in the crowdsourced brand is the accountability? What if the ID or brand building strategy that looked neat at first falls flat? No one has any reason to care if you make it. You can start crowdsourcing your turnaround strategy – if you have the time. Otherwise, you’re sunk.

Crowdsourcing is like anything else. It’s has to be done right. And right when it comes to your brand, your business, is a strategic partner who can see what’s up ahead and help you position your brand to continue to succeed, a pro to wrangle the crowd. That’s how you do it – if you want to win.

This is how it works these days: Top military brass teaming up with the author of Three Cups of Tea, a book about building schools in Military brass Pakistan, to try to gain some insight that will help them hold off counterinsurgency. Why? Because that’s how you succeed. When the usual doesn’t work – the way it isn’t working in business these days – you find people who think differently, build alliances, and figure out what it’s going to take. What unlikely alliances have you thought about lately?

Whatever you do, don’t read this New York Times story about Full Circle, a Skee-Ball bar in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg and think you’re reading about a Skee-Ball craze. Because you’re not. OK, well you kind of are, but what you’re really reading about, once again, is the fact consumers are always more interested in fun than fancy. And you know how you know what people think is fun? The way Full Circle’s owners did: You tap into what you enjoy, then you give consumers the opportunity to get in on the fun with you. That works, because fun is contagious. But not fake fun. Real fun. If you dig what you’re doing, and it’s really, honestly fun, and you do it right, others will get on board. How do we know? Because we keep seeing how well it works. Go play some on-line Skee-Ball and see for yourself.

What do the YMCA and a bunch of fairly hoity-toity private country clubs have in common? Not a whole lot, generally. But there’s at least this: Both have been in the news for efforts to loosen things up.

Take a look at this Wall Street Journal story about country clubs dropping their traditional bans on denim – because they’re starting to realize that keeping younger golfers out is the opposite of bringing them in (go figure) – and this one from The New York Times about the Y.M.C.A. making the decision to formally call itself what everyone else has called it for years (that is, just the Y).

“It’s a way of being warmer, more genuine, more welcoming, when you call yourself what everyone else calls you,” Y Senior VP and Chief Marketing Officer Kate Coleman told the Times.

It’s also a pretty good way of sending out the message that you get the world you live in. Because, hey, it’s fine to insist on formality and tradition if that’s what’s most important to you. But you can’t do it and sit around wondering why no one’s buying what you’re selling, as country club board members have been doing for some time, If you want to get ahead these days, you’ve got to loosen it up.

Great Yankee Stadium announcer Bob Sheppard died yesterday morning at age 99.

Remember last week (scroll down, for heaven’s sake) when we wrote about our pals at the International Federation of Competitive Eating/Major League Eating? Well, The New York Times this past weekend ran a nice feature piece on the boys, Rich and George Shea. Definitely worth a read, even if you won’t see a mention of the world records we were part of establishing. Just so you know, we were on board with these guys years ago, working with the IFOCE in 2002 and 2003 on events that set the records for inhaling corned beef hash, honey dipped doughnuts and green peas. They were fun to work with then. And they deserve every bit of the success they’ve had since.

Palladium makes a hell of a boot. Some companies (a lot of companies) would figure the only way to sell a hell of a boot is to keep telling everyone that you make a hell of a boot. Not Palladium. Why? Well, maybe because they know the world is full of companies that are forever talking about how they make a hell of a boot. Doesn’t matter if you think (even if you know) your boots are the best; it’s all but impossible for consumers to filter out the noise. So you can keep saying and saying and saying the same stuff and hope consumers find you. Or you can do something really cool and give consumers a reason to find you. That’s how Palladium is approaching it.

Go to the Explorations page on Palladium’s web site and check out the series of videos they’ve produced, hitting on topics from lost, forgotten and abandoned places in New York City; to comes carved out of old Cold War missile silos; to pirate radio in London. You’ll see the young reporters wearing Palladium boots as they “go exploring,” but you won’t feel like you’re being sold. Mostly, you’ll feel like you’re watching something really fascinating and different (because that’s what you’ll be doing). And, oh yeah, the boots do look great. (And while you’re at Palladium’s site, there’s no reason not to check out what’s available.)

This is inbound marketing the way it should be done. Take a look at this one here, then go and check out the rest.