Starz continues to grow in popularity as they get ready to launch more originals than ever before. Michael Bay’s Black Sails, set to launch in January 2014 had a big presence at Comic-Con and has already sparked fan interested in a big way. The pirate adventure, starring Zach McGowan (Jody from Shameless), “centers on the tales of Captain Flint and his men and takes place twenty years prior to Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic ‘Treasure Island.'” The show has even already received a second season order before the first season has aired. Fueled by a social campaign and Comic-Con activation the network has already engaged social TV fans in a big way by showing off why pirates are better than zombies.
Building an army of pirates months before the show airs:
Starz launched PiratesWanted.com as a genius way to start promoting the show. The community “demonstrates the price of a pirate’s life” and is packed with “truthful” facts about a pirate’s life that they put together with a pirate consultant, according to the network. The show’s social channels have already seen big growths and are coming into this series without a built in comic book series audience or book like Game of Thrones or The Walking Dead.
Targeting influencers and genre fans at Comic-Con:
At the convention in San Diego Starz even got the uber fans of others genres to Take The Oath and dedicate themselves to a pirate’s life. McGowan and Starz even made a hilarious video about What A Pirate Would Do:
Starz already has already 13,000 likes on the Facebook page for Black Sails and will continue to use social TV to make 2014 the year of the pirate.