It’s probably not a big secret that I’m a huge TV nerd, and as such I love Social TV. What I’m constantly astounded by, is how little thought and effort is put into most TV show social strategies. Sure, Doctor Who and Supernatural do some stuff, but in all honestly – most of this is fuelled by fandom, not smart, creative thinking.
Enter Broad City.
Until I researched this piece, I had no idea that the creators and stars Abbi and Ilana worked in SEO/social pre web-series, but suddenly all became clear.
As the second season of Broad City launched on Comedy Central in the US, it was obvious that the girls had upped their game. Their Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr presence was top notch, but not satisfied with that they decided to hit dark social as well, creating their own keyboard app, so you could now share your fave Abbi and Ilana gifs with your BFF in texts.
They partnered with Lyft and created a Broad City bus (that featured a replica of Abbi’s apartment) and drove it around picking up customers, who then Instagrammed it like crazy. (hashtags front and centre)
But the real genius was in the way the show was aware of which moments in each episode people were going to want to share. These were the ones they created gifs and stickers from and served up in their keyboard app. This was updated weekly, after each new episode with content that had just aired.
They also created in show moments that referenced online content – who can forget the al dente dentist or the glorious Body By Trey dot Biz ?
Don’t get me wrong, these ladies were a content marketing machine, throughout the 10 episode run all of the owned channels posted regularly, but it didn’t ever get annoying, even if you followed them on everything. Reasons being
1) The tone of voice was always totally on point.
This isn’t a brands saying BAE type situation. Abbi and Ilana can talk like millennials, because they are millennials.
2) Catchphrases that are good hashtags.
There was no attempt to keep jokes running longer than they needed to. These girls (and their marketing team) understand that Twitter is all about the now so each episode would feature at least a couple of super hashtaggable moments, just ripe for the tweeting.
3) Their approach was integrated perfectly, but they kept their channel content separate.
Gifs and longtail content goes on Tumblr, videos are uploaded natively to Facebook, Twitter is perfect for gifs, memes and showing off fan art. Although the content occasionally crossed over, the strategy was clear and it worked. None of it felt like an marketing ploy dreamt up by a middle aged man who doesn’t get it.
Their social strategy feels less ‘put together’ than HBOs for Girls (which caters to a similar demographic), where everything feels a little bit more corporate than it should. With Broad City it all manages to feel natural and effortless. And this in turn, makes you really, really want to be their friend.
This is a perfect example of an always on social media campaign with well thought out content at its core.
It’s something we should all aim for.
Oh, and check this out for some of the best Broad City social moments.