The Campaign

TV5 Network is a challenger in a country where all free TV eyeballs are controlled by just 2 networks ABS-CBN and GMA. The country’s 100 million plus TV viewing audience are all hooked to the steady diet of soap operas or “teleseryes” and variety shows that these networks dish out. In a country where 80% of households only own one TV, Moms or family elders control the remote. The Philippines is a young country where half its population is younger than 23 and yet this younger market was largely ignored by the big networks. TV5 saw the opportunity to appeal to this younger audience with content that was made for them.

Results

Hunted by a methodical stalker, famous Philippine actress, Jasmine Curtis-Smith stars as herself in a 9 episode suspense thriller TV series about her acting in a romantic comedy TV series intertwining real life and fictional people, content, and social media accounts to create the illusion that the events in the TV series are real. The TV series was complimented by a carefully orchestrated roll out of online, OOH, PR, and activation executions woven into the show’s narrative, creating the illusion that the events in the show were happening in real life.

We created social media accounts for our characters to establish them as real people. Then the stalker interacted with Jasmine in real life: he left love messages in public, he interrupted a live TV event, defaced her billboard, broke into her apartment, and filmed her sleeping. He recorded everything on jasmineallmine.com. He even made the national news. After we revealed that Jasmine was being stalked in the show, we cancelled the airing of episode 2 for “security reasons”. Throughout the series, real celebrities and fans starred as themselves. Then, clues appeared in the real world helping viewers unravel the mystery.

“Jasmine” reached over 30 million online users. As of the season finale, the official Facebook page has the most number of fans for any TV5 show (5x more than the previous leader). All of the episodes trended consistently on Twitter. And Jasmine garnered over 102 million media impressions.

TV5, the third largest TV network in the Philippines, asked us to create an ad campaign to revitalize the network’s image and attract a new, younger audience. But instead of giving them the ad they wanted we created JASMINE, the social transmedia TV experience that intertwines reality and fiction. We made a 9 episode suspense-thriller TV series, we created and populated social media accounts for our characters, and we rolled out OOH and PR stunts to create the illusion that the events in the series are real