Creative Execution

To launch The Blacklist, we drew viewers into the underworld controlled by criminal mastermind and protagonist, Red Reddington. We piqued viewers’ interest with a chair-gripping teaser video, a curious email alert that AXN’s website had been hacked and cryptic messages seeded across social media withholding a secret code. With secret material planted within www.axn-asia.com, we invited viewers to unlock our website with the secret code; Once granted access, viewers accessed Reddington’s Blacklist where they got the opportunity to watch the first episode pre-broadcast and participate in an exclusive contest to win prizes including Blacklist merchandise and Sony Xperia Z mobiles.

We created a social reach of over 5M from 222K social actions, with over 40K views of the campaign video. A CTR of 5.66% on our content smashed the category average by 4 times, with a share rate 7 times the category average (Source: Unruly). There were 13x more visits to the AXN brand hub vs. previous month. The Blacklist became one of AXN’s highest rated TV shows across Southeast Asia, from its pilot episode and more importantly, sustaining thereafter for the subsequent episodes. All of this with a digital media budget of less that $20K.

Crime drama fans tend to fancy themselves as master criminals or detectives, enjoying the thrill of ‘solving’ mysteries. With that insight, our campaign idea ignited – a digital puzzle for potential viewers to solve, with the reward of an exclusive viewing of the full first episode online. The objective was to build awareness and sustain interest amidst the launch of AXN’s newest series the Blacklist as the next big hit series, amidst the loss of distribution rights from it’s serial blockbuster CSI. We wanted to create a campaign that was novel and thought-provoking – moving the viewer’s experience from an “appointment-to-view” to a “participation” model that need not have to end or begin with a particular episode; one which they could engage with via smart devices/tablets while watching. We wanted to stir conversations across social platforms before, during and after episodes that build anticipation of what’s going to happen next.