Network of the Year: BBDO

Digital
Use of Social Media

Silver Winner

Entrant: Clemenger BBDO, Sydney

FX Channel
"Zombie Followers"


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Corporate Name of Client: Foxtel
Marketing and Digital Media Manager, Foxtel: Jamie Zarzycki
Social media Marketing Manager, Foxtel: David Higgins
Agency Account Supervisor: Jasmine Krnjetin
Account Manager: Vinnie Romano
Planning Director: David Halter
PR / Marketing: Porter Novelli Sydney
Managing Director, Porter Novelli Sydney: Annalise Brown
Senior Social Integration Manager, Porter Novelli Sydney:
    Toby Clarke
Agency: Clemenger BBDO, Sydney
Executive Creative Director: Paul Nagy
Copywriter: Tom Russell
Art Director: Katrina Jarratt
Head of Production: Dave Flanagan
Programmer: John Knutsson
Client Company: Foxtel, Sydney
PR/ Media Agency Company: Porter Novelli, Sydney
Digital Partner Agency Company: Clemenger Proximity, Sydney

Description of the Project:
Brief/objective
We needed to create awareness for the fourth season return of The Walking Dead on Foxtel’s FX channel. The mid-season return in February is perfectly timed for the northern hemisphere. But in Australia we’re thinking about the beach and cricket, not zombies. So we needed a campaign that would put The Walking Dead top of mind. The audience was both new and existing customers, but we identified and targeted key influencers with the aim of getting them to spread the message that The Walking Dead is back, and the first place to see it is on Foxtel’s FX channel.
Creative solution
With limited budget, our solution was a social media campaign that would be voluntarily talked about and shared. Everyone knows zombies like to follow people, so we created 8,000 zombie Twitter profiles and followed key influencers on Twitter. Our aim was to start a zombie outbreak that would get tweeted about. Once the outbreak was big enough and Twitter took notice, we revealed the outbreak was caused by the return of The Walking Dead. By creating something interesting and unexpected enough to tweet about, we could reach an audience that would grow exponentially with no extra media costs.
We took the premise of The Walking Dead (a group of people being followed by hordes of zombies) and brought that exact scenario into people’s everyday lives. Foxtel and FX are entertainment brands and programs like The Walking Dead are conversation starters. So our creative solution had to be engaging, surprising and entertaining. And it needed to get people talking.
Results
The campaign received a total of 1,803,885 impressions (1,583,657 Twitter and 220,228 Facebook) with an 88% positive sentiment (measured by Radian6). The hashtag #zombiefollowers trended in Sydney and the FX channel Twitter handle (@FXTVAU) trended in Australia. The campaign was tweeted about by a prominent politician, journalists, bloggers and even by our national broadcaster, the ABC. The fourth season return of The Walking Dead was the top-rating show of the night on subscription TV. All from a campaign that was live for less than 24 hours with a total budget under $18,000 AUD (< $16,000 production and <$2,000 media).