Community Lives On.
CAMPAIGN | Social | key art | DIGITAL | Events | PartnershIps | branded content
We uncancelled the class
Once the news broke that Yahoo! bought the canceled NBC cult-favorite series Community, we new an ambitious task was ahead of us. We needed to take one of the most fan-loved, critically-acclaimed, network-neglected shows on TV and essentially relaunch it digitally to both it’s very dedicated audience and hopefully an all new one.
We needed the internet to see Yahoo! as savior of their beloved show, not a place for it to die, again.
We landed on the tagline Community Lives On and began geeking out on all things Community. Our top creative priority was becoming one with the existing fanbase of the show. We studied every detail of the prior seasons and fan forums to pack each creative tactic deep in as much meta humor and hidden references as possible.
KEY ART
For the show’s new key art, we piled five seasons of inside jokes (over 40 references) and character development onto the roof of an AMC Gremlin– screaming "we're moving from NBC to Yahoo!" both literally and figuratively.
Fan Events
We extended the Community Lives On campaign to CommuniCon, SXSW, and fan-created “CommuniCon.”
RESULTS
The work spread and gained almost a billion earned media impressions in the entertainment media, with half a dozen press features leading to the premiere. Fan anticipation soared and even reddit was happy. Well, mostly.
Two-minute parody behind-the-scenes film brought 23 million new cinema-goers into the Community fanbase.
PArtnerships | branded Content
Season 6 on Yahoo! was underway and primed to attract record viewership, but we still needed to lock in top-tier advertisers. The ad-free nature of streaming made traditional ad buys a hard no so we knew we needed to develop a creative and innovative method of branded content or product placement. We decided on both.
In an unheard of collaboration, marketing + creative + the show’s writers all worked together to create an entire full-length episode of product placement. We essentially created the first full-length-product-placement-branded-content episode, fully playing off of the show’s very established self-aware style of humor. It was insane and it worked.