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Brief
Hot Cherry was hired to create an online PR & social media campaign to promote Misfits - a new, cutting-edge comedy drama which followed five ASBO teenagers caught in a flash storm who suddenly found themselves saddled with strange superpowers. The series consisted of 6 episodes and was broadcast during the autumn of 2009.
We have worked with Channel 4 and E4 since 2005 on a series of innovative online PR & Social Media campaigns including TV shows (True Blood and School of Comedy), gaming projects (E4’s Grand Master Flash entry into the annual Golden Joystick Awards) and viral projects (Germ – the world’s first international viral Oscars, and Outrageous and Contagious, the world’s first viral exhibition at London’s prestigious ICA gallery. Hot Cherry were the brains behind both of these projects).
The Online PR & Social Media campaign for Misfits had to engage an online audience; to ignite positive word of mouth online, encourage audiences to watch the show, discuss it and find out more. This would involve tapping into existing online conversations about related E4 shows like Skins and The Inbetweeners, whilst at the same time driving traffic to e4.com.
To create online buzz the agency were allowed to use content assets from the shows themselves plus marketing and additionally commissioned material, cast interviews and access.
To maximise the amount of conversation about the show off- and online, the Online PR & Social Media campaign would have to be integrated into the show publicists’ traditional PR campaign where possible.
We were also required to provide a solid evaluation of the campaign with a meaningful insight into its impact.
Strategy
To start with, we monitored online conversation about the show and identified early online adopters – those already talking and sharing information about the show with their friends, or most likely to, before it launched.
A broader more mainstream online audience were also identified – influential online ambassadors across blogs, forums, sites and social networks – those most likely to become advocates and help ignite positive word of mouth and conversation around the show.
Assets would be leaked out before the show aired creating intrigue and anticipation. This would end up spreading like wildfire online.
During the show, assets were drip-fed to influential online groups to create dialogue and foster awareness of the show among a mainstream audience.
Specifically, the strategy was designed to ignite positive word of mouth online by reaching the most influential online communities. The strategy would also help the show to create direct and two-way dialogue with fans i.e. those that were most likely to talk positively (and repeatedly) about the show. This would help to maintain a consistent positive buzz for each episode, help to boost viewing figures and engage fans among social networks.
The strategy was designed to create a campaign that produced measurable, qualitative and quantitative results.
Execution
We organised a secret VIP blogger event. They invited the most influential and relevant bloggers, e.g. comic book and geek bloggers, to a secret screening of the first episode of Misfits before anyone else had the chance to. The event also gave bloggers the opportunity to conduct podcast interviews and Twinterviews with Howard Overman, the show’s writer.
The event inspired bloggers to tweet about the show which ignited awareness, online buzz and re-tweets before anyone else. They also promoted their podcast interview with Howard Overman on their blog which ignited further online conversation and spread far and wide online.
Those attending the event were given an exclusive and limited edition Marvel style Misfits comic and Misfits ‘Community Service’ branded T-shirt. Some posted pictures of these on their blog and image sharing platforms like Flickr – this helped to create additional online buzz and intrigue in the show.
Broader, more mainstream, types of online communities were also indentified by us as we seeded promotional material like trailers to them during broadcast. Different types of online communities included TV, celebrity, fans of related shows (Skins, The Inbetweeners), entertainment, sci-fi, teen and students.
Pre broadcast, we started to seed a specifically commissioned game by E4 called Misfits Do A Runner and created by the BAFTA award-winning design studio, Preloaded, among the most influential gaming blogs websites and social networks.
The game allowed players to become one of the show’s characters and adopt their superpowers. Players were encouraged to do a runner and escape by unlocking doors and heading for the exit avoiding obstacles on the way. The game encouraged fans to engage and interact with the show in an interesting, fun and entertaining way. This helped to create positive word of mouth online about Misfits and create a viral effect before the show had even started.
Prior to the show launch, clips, trailers and imagery were leaked out to online communities which helped to generate further anticipation and interest in the launch of the series.
We launched the show with trailers, exclusive clips and imagery which were seeded on a weekly basis to the most influential online communities. Competitions offering fans limited edition merchandise and exclusive filmed interviews with the cast was also promoted during the series across the most relevant and influential online communities.
By selectively distributing content, key online influencers began to feel valued; they received something that they could use to help start a dialogue about the show among their online networks. This led to online influencers investing emotionally, benefiting the show overall and maintaining interest throughout the series.
The show’s innovative cross- platform campaign continued with bespoke character Twitter streams which were created and managed by Six To Start in close collaboration with Clerkenwell Films, creators of Misfits. These streams were active and live during the broadcast and saw each character tweeting before during and after each TX. We promoted the social networks across the most influential blogs, websites and social networks which helped to create direct dialogue between fans and the show’s characters. This led to further online buzz, word of mouth and conversation about the show.
As well as the Twitter streams, there was also an official Facebook page, and the character of Simon also had has own Facebook page which further enabled fans to engage with the drama directly. We were able to use all of this activity to further enhance the drama’s profile in the online space.
Exclusive footage not broadcast in the show e.g. footage from one of the characters recording something on their mobile phone during an episode, were also drip-fed into the Facebook page. This made the show’s social networks sticky and encouraged fans to engage and interact with it.
The agency used various tools to listen, monitor and measure online conversation about the show. This helped them to react, respond, create ongoing dialogue and start new conversations with online communities.
Results
The Online PR and Social Media campaign helped Misfits rapidly became one of the most talked about television drama series of 2009.
The campaign helped to create and maintain a consistent, positive buzz for each episode among the most influential fans with over 350 pieces of online coverage to date. Different types of online communities talked about the show including TV, celebrity, entertainment, comic book, geek, comedy, social media commentators and teen.
Over 100,000 fans joined the Facebook page with 99% positive sentiment expressed towards the show. Over 3,000 people tweeted about the show per hour during broadcast. The Misfits online game was played over 100,000 times.
Conversations around Misfits were generated among fans throughout the series which created a fanbase and fostered direct dialogue among fans. This helped to create loyalty among fan base who will support Misfits and related E4 shows.
Misfits averaged over 1m views per episode across E4 and 4oD and, in 2009, The Guardian voted it as one of the best moments in television. E4 have commissioned series 2 to broadcast later in 2010.
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