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Netflix hits a high with Derek social media campaign

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By Jennifer Faull, Deputy Editor

October 16, 2013 | 3 min read

Netflix’s recent social media campaign to promote the release of the show, Derek, on its platform has proved to be as popular as the show itself, thanks to a little help from lead actor Ricky Gervais. The British comedy follows the title character of Derek, played by Gervais, who volunteers at a nursing home. Derek often goes above and beyond for the residents, and creative agency Ralph wanted to build a campaign that would centre around the theme of kindness, encouraging fans to emulate the title character’s generous nature via Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. The campaign initially urged fans to send in their favourite lines from the TV show using the hashtag #BeLikeDerek, while daily posts from the @BeLikeDerek accounts featured acts of kindness and extraordinary elderly people seen in the news. Later, an initiative called #TextsWithGran asked fans to text their grandparents with the question - “What’s the most important thing you’ve learned in life?”. Fans tweeted screengrabs of the text conversations, with many being retweeted by Gervais himself who has over five million followers. Overall this piece single piece of activity proved most popular, pulling in hundreds of submissions from across the word. #AskDerek, a live Twitter chat where fans could interact with the Derek cast and the producers, also helped promote the show. During the half-hour session the @BeLikeDerek Twitter account garnered hundreds of questions and comments.Over the month that the campaign ran, the activity resulted in over 22,000 Facebook likes and 10,537 Twitter followers. Individual posts on the Derek Facebook page reach highs of over 100,000 people, while high-performing Derek Facebook posts saw a 9-11 per cent engagement rate with people liking, commenting, or sharing. Here are some of the highlights from the campaign.

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