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Future of TV Sharknado 3 Twitter

Behind the scenes of the Sharknado campaign that made it more popular online than Mad Men

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By Jennifer Faull | Deputy Editor

August 3, 2015 | 5 min read

The newly-released Sharknado 3 saw a record level of social engagement as people took to Twitter, Facebook Vine, and even Periscope in reaction to the ridiculous scenes that have made it a pop-culture hit.

In total, the buzz around Sharknado 3 resulted in over two billion global Twitter impressions – double the one billion impressions for 2014’s Sharknado 2 and more than every episode of the final season of Mad Men.

The run-up

Underpinning the social success was a content campaign devised by Telegraph Hill, which has worked with Syfy and sister channel E! – both owned by NBC Universal - on a number of other projects.

Telegraph Hill had been hired to manage driving awareness and buzz in the UK. Perhaps surprisingly, planning for the event kicked off just three months before the film aired.

On the back of a similar campaign for E!’s Red Carpet events, the campaign's creators planned a watchalong event for the film. They rented out the rooftop bar of the Carnaby Street Courthouse Hotel and set about inviting celebrities and social media influencers that would help drive online conversations as the film was aired.

Selecting the talent was a two-pronged strategy. The Syfy team wanted celebrities whose following was already interested in science fiction; on the other side of the coin they needed celebrities who would reach a new demographic with perhaps little or no knowledge of the Sharknado franchise.

"“It was important for us to invite mainstream recognisable faces through to more targeted specialist names. It was important to get the mainstream appeal as well as the credibility within the genre,” explained NBC Universal's vice president of marketing, Sarah Lloyd-Baker.

Jedward – of X-Factor fame – led the line-up, joined by The Only Way is Essex’s Gemma Collins , TV presenter Joe Swash, Red Dwarf star Robert Llewellyn as well as Vine star Arron Crascall and YouTuber Jimmy Hill.

“It was also just about who’s going to be up for the fun and craziness of the event that night,” added Garret Keogh, managing director and founder of Telegraph Hill.

On the night

The hotel rooftop was taken over by plastic shark heads, rubber rings, and other themed props.

A content team stood primed as the film began, tweeting during key moments and sharing content across platforms as the invited guests reacted to the film’s best scenes.

At each ad break, some of the celebrities where whisked off to a studio set up in the corner of the terrace to film their reactions. The films were then edited and sent out across Facebook and Twitter within a matter of minutes by the team.

One of the biggest challenges of any event of this ilk is encouraging the stars to take pictures, tweet, and engage – unprompted – with their audiences.

“Creating the environment in which the talent are happy is key is important. We weren’t chasing them and making them tweet. We created a party atmosphere and that got the best out of them,” said Keogh.

Result

The social metrics exceeded all expectations of both NBC Universal and Telegraph Hill.

In the UK, Sharknado 3 delivered 49.7 million impressions and substantially grew its following across all its social platforms. Globally, this rose to over two billion impression.

Further data later delivered by Brandwatch found that over 435,252 people sent tweets about the film, predominantly in the US where there were over 367,000 mentions.

It event drew the attention of companies such as Nasa, Dorritos, Pizza Hut and Hotels.com which set about creating their own content to get in on the action.

Not bad for a film that saw the Whitehouse destroyed by a flying shark, sharks make it to space, and the leading lady give birth to a perfectly healthy child from inside a shark that had recently plummeted back to earth. Sorry, spoiler alert.

Future of TV Sharknado 3 Twitter

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