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Sharknado Syfy Future of TV

Exclusive: Syfy's Senior Director of Digital Jeannine Irons on Sharknado 3

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By Natan Edelsburg, SVP

July 23, 2015 | 5 min read

One of the biggest and most anticipated social media events of the year Syfy's "Sharnado 3: Oh Hell No!" has hit the small screen in what's sure to be another massive trending event. Whether or not Tara Reid and Ian Ziering will delight fans again is to be determined but the digital campaigns and social strategy are as sharp as ever.

Sharknado 3

Sharknado 3

Found Remote just interviewed Syfy's Senior Director of Digital and Social Marketing, Jeannine Irons on the details of the network's digital and social media campaigns.

Found Remote: What were the digital/social media plans/campaigns for Sharknado 3?

Jeannine Irons: Syfy began our Sharknado 3 social media campaign in May/June, along with our agency partners Glow and Maxus. Our main strategy was to find unique new ways to tap into the huge cultural phenomenon that Sharknado has become, and to help make Sharknado 3 another can’t-miss event.

Because Sharknado 3 blows through Washington, DC on its way down the Eastern Seaboard, and because it’s become such a huge pop culture event, we developed messaging and creative designed to drive home the point that watching the movie is your patriotic duty as an American. To that end, we’ve engaged with fans, influencers, the cast and select partners to create a truly immersive experience.

And to make it even more interactive for fans, we updated our Go Shark Yourself App from Sharknado 2, where fans can upload their photos onto Sharknado-themed backgrounds, which for Sharknado 3 includes scenes from various American landmarks.

Additionally, we created various American propaganda-style poster images, along with quote cards, that paired Sharknado images with quotes from great Americans to again tie back to our “patriotism” theme. And we also made sure to have sharks invade traditional American events on July 4th to celebrate the holiday.

Another angle we wanted to explore was taking advantage of the numerous cameos featured in the movie. We created custom social assets packs for those individuals to activate, to leverage their social media networks and create maximum buzz and conversation pre-premiere and during the movie.

We also engaged directly with influencers to help promote the film, including YouTube Channel Barely Productions to create the latest installment in their Reggae Shark series, Reggae Sharknado.

Leading up to premiere, we provided fans who used #HomeoftheNado in their tweets, a custom Sharknado video of their tweet powered by a company called Glif.

Lastly, to make Sharknado a can’t-miss event, we launched a contest called FOMS (Fear Of Missing Sharknado), which runs from 7/21 through 7/22 (the day of premiere), where fans can win an exclusive Sharknado bobblehead by sharing how they are celebrating the event.

FR: What tools will you be using to track the chatter around the show?

JI: There are a number of tools we are using to measure the buzz.

We are using a Tickr dashboard powered by Sysomos, which pulls in real-time data from Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. This dashboard includes our total reach and mentions on Twitter, fans and followers across Facebook and Twitter, our interaction across Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, in addition to tracking top influencers.

We are also using Social Guide to track influencers who have large followings and the most retweets or tweets, as well as ListenFirst to pull total engagements across all social platforms after the movie airs.

FR: Is there worry that after two years of social media conversation success that this third year will drop off?

JI: With any franchise, you always want to top yourself. But we are embracing the third installment of Sharknado and building on all that we have done before to reengage prior fans and bring new fans on board.

FR: Are the talent more active on social now?

JI: Absolutely! The cast, as well as our cameo talent, have been awesome and have fully engaged and embraced social, utilizing the custom assets we created for them to leverage across all of their social media platforms.

FR: How can one use digital platforms and social media to defend themselves from a Sharknado?

JI: If we can get #Sharknado3 to trend globally, then we will be able to stop those angry sharks from attacking!

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