| Title | ZOMBIE FOLLOWERS |
| Brand | FOXTEL |
| Product / Service | THE WALKING DEAD |
| Category | A06. Use of Social in a Direct Campaign |
| Entrant | CLEMENGER BBDO SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA |
| Entrant Company | CLEMENGER BBDO SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA |
| Advertising Agency | CLEMENGER BBDO SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA |
| 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 | 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 | In House Developer |
| Annalise Brown | Porter Novelli | Managing Director |
| Toby Clark | Porter Novelli | Senior Social Integration Manager |
| John Knutsson | Clemenger BBDO Sydney | Senior Programmer |
| David Higgins | Foxtel | Social Media Marketing Manager |
| Jamie Zarsycki | Fox International Channels | Marketing And Digital Media Manager |
| Porter Novelli | Additional company |
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
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 its FX are entertainment brands. Programs like The Walking Dead are conversation starters. So our creative solution had to be engaging, surprising and entertaining. And I need to get people talking
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 influences 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 hoped to gain an audience that would grow exponentially with no extra media costs.
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)