MTV launches online prank campaign to promote Catfish second series
MTV has launched an online prank campaign to promote the second series of its TV show Catfish which airs next Monday (2 September).
The media owner worked with creative agency Ralph to produce the campaign, which centres on a webcam forum, which fans can log-in to chat live with the show’s characters.
The twist of the campaign is that the video fans see when they log-in to the forum is prerecorded, mimicking a live experience.
The aim of the prank video is to emphasise the show’s core theme, which is that people never really know who they are speaking to when they’re chatting online.
The video was filmed in one take, with a series of incorporated live swaps including the lead actor, who swaps in and out of the camera frame, and objects are moved around to appear in different places.
Early tests have shown that 75 per cent of users don’t notice that the experience is not live.
The idea for the campaign was derived from a psychological phenomenon known as ‘change blindness’, where participants fail to see major changes they would normally notice but have missed because their attention is diverted at key moments.
Catfish series two, which follows the stories of couples who have fallen in love online but never met in person, airs at 9pm on MTV UK.
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