ZOMBIE FOLLOWERS

Short List
TitleZOMBIE FOLLOWERS
BrandFOXTEL
Product / ServiceTHE WALKING DEAD
CategoryE01. Social
EntrantCLEMENGER BBDO SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA
Entrant Company CLEMENGER BBDO SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA
Advertising Agency CLEMENGER BBDO SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA

Credits

Name Company Position
Paul Nagy Clemenger BBDO Sydney Executive Creative Director
Katrina Jarratt Clemenger BBDO Sydney Art Director
Tom Russell Clemenger BBDO Sydney Copywriter
David Halter Clemenger BBDO Sydney Digital Planning Director
Jasmina Krnjetin Clemenger BBDO Sydney Group Account Director
Vinnie Romano Clemenger BBDO Sydney Senior Account Manager
Dave Flanagan Clemenger BBDO Sydney Head Of Digital Production
John Knutsson Clemenger BBDO Sydney Senior Programmer
Annalise Brown Porter Novelli Managing Director
Toby Clark Porter Novelli Senior Social Integration Manager
David Higgins Foxtel Social Media Marketing Manager
Jamie Zarsycki Fox International Channels Marketing And Digital Media Manager
Porter Novelli Additional company

Creative Execution

To cause a zombie outbreak on Twitter we by created over 8,000 zombie Twitter profiles using The Walking Dead’s Dead Yourself app. Overnight the zombies started following people and they woke up to thousands of new zombie followers. As expected, they tweeted about the outbreak and the audience grew exponentially. We responded to tweets about zombies in real time and the outbreak quickly gained massive attention. Twitter began killing off the zombie accounts, but we were prepared. As the first accounts were terminated the remaining zombies all revealed that the outbreak was caused by the return of The Walking Dead.

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 ABC 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).

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.

Links

Website URL