The show that will replace the void in viewers’ hearts after Breaking Bad ends will be the Starz returning drama, Boss. Last year’s first season received critical acclaim and the network launched a social experience to capture the scandal from the show as Kelsey Grammer (Mayor Tom Kane) put him the best performance of his career. This time, they’ve created an amazing Facebook-connected video trailer that makes you the central character through some snazzy technological trickery.
We spoke to Erin Dwyer, Starz Executive Director of Digital Marketing about the creative ways the Colorado-based network is launching the new season across the social web.
Boss’s successful first season:
Shockingly, the Television Academy forgot about Boss and Grammer (who won the Golden Globe for Best Actor at the beginning of the year) in this year’s Emmy nominations. The show’s first season received extremely good reviews and continues to help the network grow their slew of originals that includes Spartacus and Magic City. The anticipated second season begins at 9pm Eastern on August 17th, and to build buzz the network is asking everyone, “What Is Your Price For Power?” — a Facebook-connected experience that draws from your social graph to create a customized video trailer with you as the central character. Watch mine right here.
If you’re addicted to show you already understand how the dark and addictive strive for power consumes each character in a different, twisted way. Starz knew that for season two they wanted to give fans a way to make that experience their own and share it with their social graphs. “When we started planning for Boss it had unique marketing objectives – we wanted to make sure we used social and digital to appeal to younger audiences, that’s who’s on our social pages,” Dwyer told Lost Remote. “We wanted to create something that would appeal to them, that would allow people to immerse themselves in the show without asking them to do too much – we wanted it to be about them, the best marketing in the social space is to give consumers something to share with their friends,” she added.
How ‘Price for Power’ works:
Learning from the viral success of the interactive Facebook horror video, Take This Lollipop, “We worked with BLT & Associates, BLTA – they were the creative technology group that built it,” Dwyer explained. “We worked internally on footage and our social agency Edelman, made certain elements like the newsletter and buttons and some tools that were in it,” she added. BLT has also worked on Dateline Chatline and A&E’s Coma.
Starz didn’t just take a trailer and throw a few interactive elements into it. They put tons of resources into developing and producing the experience. Dwyer shared the following details with us to explain how it works.
- Pulls photos, names, activities, martial status, creates a replica of your facebook page and appears to manipulate your Facebook life
- We have counted more data points than most experiences we have seen (over 24 data points being leveraged)
- 5 main categories of your content (all your profile pictures, all your friend profile pictures, name, friends names, personal information data)
- Worked to have eerie accuracy – wanted it to be more than a photo on a wall or a name on a screen, hopefully we reached our goal
- The experience manipulates your information in myriad of different ways- we are not just pulling in photos and names.
- The experience delivers random messaging so its not exactly the same every time the user visits.
Additionally, when developing the app (which took over a month) they created tech that to their knowledge hasn’t been done before in an integration like this:
- The experience has nothing to do with the show per se, it’s a unique movie about me, using show footage, but not a movie about the show
- We appear to “manipulate” the users Facebook page experience, which to our knowledge has not been done before. In other experiences Facebook pages have been recreated, but we’re actually making their Facebook presence as a key story line element by changing elements that are ubiquitous with our social presence.
- There are a lot of instances of user’s information on MOVING objects and on background objects showing an eerie attention to detail and accuracy. Usual FB connect data treatment is static, ours involves a lot of fluid placements which is highly difficult and requires an artist’s touch frame by frame.
Boss talent on social:
Dwyer pointed out examples of Boss talent that’s active on social. “Rotimi [Akinosho] who’s Emma’s love interest is very active, Sanaa [Lathan] who plays Mona is very active on Facebook and has a ton of fans,” she described. “We encourage everyone to like the cast – [Troy] Garity who plays Sam Miller is beefing up his social… they’re really active,” she added. Grammer used to be on Twitter where he made headlines in 2010 for announcing his divorce. Even more unfortunate is that no one has started tweeting as his character Tom Kane.
Continuing to empower fans leading up to the launch:
“The app is the biggest part of our strategy,” Dwyer told Remote, “but were working with our social agency Edelman – you’ll see some infographics and post cards, were playing with some tools to bring the fans closer to the show and the cast – those will be eleemnts that you use all season long. Additionally they’ll be extremely active on Facebook and Twitter (via @Boss_Starz, #BossTV and #PriceforPower) looking to reply and interact with as many fans as possible. Here’s the main infographic they’ve put together to capture the price of power:
