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TruTV Future of TV Puja Vohra

No joke: Impractical Jokers live 100th episode special a huge social TV success

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By Adam Flomenbaum, Co-Executive Editor

September 15, 2015 | 6 min read

One of truTV’s most successful shows, Impractical Jokers, celebrated its 100th episode last week in epic (and live) fashion. The show scored 3.7 million viewers in Live +3 – it was truTV’s highest-rated telecast in more than a year and a half. On social platforms the show generated more than 150 million combined impressions.

truTV.com and the Impractical Jokers app saw more than triple its average number of unique visitors.

#LivePunishment was a top 10 trend in the U.S., delivering more than 76 million impressions, and video streams on Periscope numbered 25,000.

For more on truTV’s digital and social activations for Impractical Jokers’ 100th episode, we spoke with Puja Vohra, Senior Vice President of Marketing & Digital, truTV:

Found Remote: What did truTV do to celebrate the 100th episode?

Puja Vohra: In celebration of the 100th episode, truTV and the Impractical Jokers took on their most challenging dare yet: an epic high-wire walk five stories in the air above New York City during the show's first ever live punishment extravaganza. The event took place on Sept 3 at the South Street Seaport and was hosted by Howie Mandel. Over 3,000 enthusiastic fans attended the event and so far the show has been watched by 3.7 million people.

FR: What were some of the digital and social activations?

Vohra: truTV utilized a number of Twitter’s platforms — including Twitter, Periscope and Snappy TV —to create a fulsome promotion. Paid and organic efforts, including a day of promoted trend, amplified everything happening across the Twitter universe through the flight of the campaign. Fans were invited to join the conversation via the official hashtag #LivePunishment. Additionally, truTV assembled a social War Room monitoring and responding to the conversation in real time. The social war room utilized SnappyTV and WhipClip to instantly create fun GIFs and short videos of all of the key moments from the live show to post immediately on social for ravenous fans to see, share, and comment on.

Beginning in August, there was also a live Periscope "Under the Wire" campaign, which informed followers to expect more information leading up to the live punishment event. On the day of event, there were several broadcasts via Periscope, including a pre and post show. Additionally, Howie Mandel took to his handle @howiemandel to broadcast before and during the live event. Howie also took over the Entertainment Weekly Instagram account posting pictures from the site.

FR: What platforms and partners did you work with?

Vohra: We had to make the support of this milestone event feel like a multi-million dollar campaign. The only way to do that was to push every partner and platform to the edge of what was possible.

In support of that goal, we utilized all truTV platforms including social media. Fans flocked to truTV.com and the Impractical Jokers app, more than tripling the average number of unique visitors. Across social media, conversation around the 100th episode generated more than 150 million impressions. On the YouTube Impractical Jokers channel, there were high double-digit increases for organic views, likes and shares. The #LivePunishment trend on Twitter delivered more than 76 million impressions, and held a spot as a top 10 trend in the United States. The special also trended across Instagram, with the Impractical Jokers app trending in Apple’s App Store and more than100,000 streams of video were viewed on Thursday, with a quarter belonging to Periscope. The spike in fan conversation enabled the show to crack the Nielsen Twitter TV ratings for series and specials, landing at #3. The Impractical Jokers digital in-show, pre-show and post-shows combined for over 60,000 unique visitors in the three days after the Live Event, making it, according to Livestream, the company that streamed the event for truTV, one of their five most-watched events of the summer.

Thankfully, we had several engaged and supportive partners including: NYC & Company, Millennium Hilton, GEICO, FanDuel and Verizon among others who helped us successfully execute the campaign.

And in the end, a non-traditional approach with partnerships and social sharing at its core ended up being the secret sauce in the success of this campaign

FR: What were the results and key learnings?

Vohra: Going into this we knew it would take more than traditional methods to elevate this special event above and beyond even the dizzying five stories that the guys are walking, so we built our plan one promotion and one partner at a time, utilizing each one’s strengths, expertise and platforms to help us entice viewers to tune-in live. The results were that 3.7 million people showed up to watch, the episode generated more than 150 million impressions and the show cracked the Nielsen Twitter TV ratings for series and specials, landing at #3 to beat out Jimmy Kimmel Live! and The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. Every piece of the campaign laddered up to the very clear main objective of getting to the core fans and providing them with content to empower them as evangelists on every platform (Twitter, YouTube, Whip Clip, Snappy, House Party, Yahoo Text, Verizon FiOS etc). Ultimately, we were able to use the Jokers fandom, the support of partners as well as our current audience to rally around a compelling live event.

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