One of my favorite TV shows this year, Revenge, has integrated into this pretty intensely. Besides a hashtag, they have a variety of Twitter accounts that retweet the shows' followers and discuss what is happening as it appears. @Gabriel_Mann, the character who plays Nolan Ross and tweets about the show live, has nearly 80,000 followers. The main character - Emily Thorne - has a website called http://emilythorne.org/ - "The Infinity Box: Hampton's Exposed! Ultimate site for ABC's Revenge." This site links to each character on the show to the personal actors and actresses websites, or their character's blogs. Because the show proved so successful in the social sphere, Target & Neiman Marcus even did a huge advertising partnership with it that was heavily discussed online on both Twitter and media publications.
What keeps me following these tactics are that they are luring consumers like me in. I made my Twitter public so @Revenge could retweet me. I read the character blogs and looked at all of these Twitter accounts just to see what the characters are saying. And there are even this many: @Revenge, @TreadwellReport, @TheNolanRoss, @TheAmandaClarke, @EmilyThorneOrg, @VictoriaGraysn, @KaraWallaceC, @HamptonsThorne, @CharGrayson and @RevengeWriters. As a media student, I'm constantly curious about who is running these accounts, what their guidelines are and how much they are getting paid. Another show, Girls on HBO, is one series I see becoming an early adopter to this phenomenon (@GirlsHBO). With its audience of 20something talkers, they already have an active presence on YouTube and Twitter. And it's changing the way we watch TV to be able to read blogs, see what fictional characters might say and be looking at two > one screen while watching TV.
As the owner of EmilyThorne.org and the player behind Emily Thorne I can assure you no one on my team gets paid, we were not hired by ABC in any fashion. We are merely fans who banded together to create a group who connected with fans and promoted the show. I've been creating television fan websites for years, my first being the popular Desperate Housewives website Desperatefans. Revenge was an obvious choice for me as Housewives was coming to a close and I needed something that spoke to me, Revenge was that thing. In the beginning it was just myself as @EmilyThorneOrg until @VictoriaGraysn joined me a short time later, and it remained that way during the entire first season.
ReplyDeleteOther characters, such as @TheNolanRoss, @CharlotteGraysn, @MrConradGrayson, etc joined us shortly before or during the second season. And we've been going incredibly strong ever since.
Also thank you for the article, I'm glad you're enjoying the site.
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