The Walking Dead live game on Facebook
The Walking Dead live game on Facebook / FOX Networks Group Germany GmbH / RTL 2 Fernsehen GmbH & Co. KG
For the new season of "The Walking Dead" FOX and RTL II (pay TV channel FOX premiered season 7 on October 24; RTL II starts airing the sixth season on November 5, 2016), the channels teamed up for the first ever interactive live game on Facebook. On November 2nd and 4th, fans of the series are called upon to visit the channel's Facebook pages to witness two YouTube stars being attacked by zombies. By using the Facebook reaction buttons, viewers could influence the happenings in real time and help the YouTubers escape. In addition, they jad the chance to win 5,000€.
The main protagonist of the live game was YouTuber Jarow (1.39 million subscribers). He found himself stuck in a world overrun by zombies and got separated from his friend, YouTuber Kurono (562k subscribers), and the rest of the group. Viewers were asked to help Jarow and Kurono. At several points during the live stream, the two asked for advice on what to do. By using the Facebook reaction buttons, viewers could tell them how they felt and what they would do in that situation. Two staff members tracked the reactions constantly and told Jarow and Kurono (and the viewers) how the majority of viewers had decided. Overall, a team of 50 people worked in the background and made sure that the live game's story could be quickly and continually adjusted. Hamburg-based communications agency achtung!, planned the event.
WOW! So spannend war das #LiveGame von #TheWalkingDead mit @julianschizo & @DatKuro! Noch ist es nicht vorbei: Morgen 16 Uhr geht’s weiter! pic.twitter.com/N3E5Vr41ys
— RTL II (@rtl2) November 3, 2016
For the chance to win 5,000€, viewers had to follow the two live streams very closely and pay attention to the circled numbers on the walls. At the end of the second live stream, they had to add up the numbers and post the result in the comments of one of the two videos.
Henner Herwig Jürgens is the Managing Director and Cofounder of VAST MEDIA, a media research and consulting company based in Berlin that provides international television industry leaders with qualitative competitive market analysis of digital entertainment and content marketing.
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