"Involve the fans" is the sine qua non of digital marketing today. But to date, these participation opportunities have been limited. What happens if you let brand advocates all the way into the tent? In this presentation Josh Richman of WGN America, Tribune Broadcasting's national cable network, and Keith Blanchard of Story Worldwide, show how you can drive offline behavior through digital by involving advocates in the creation of content, and curating the digital communities that form around it.

1. RISE OF THE SUPERFANS
Growing TV Audience By Empowering Digital Communities

3. WE’RE PUTTING SUPERFANS ON TV.

4. TODAY’S PLAYLIST
• The Partnership and
Our Challenge
• The Superfan Strategy
• Handing Over (Gulp!)
The Keys
• Results and Next Steps
• Q&A

5. The PARTNERSHIP.
How Superstation WGNA and Story Worldwide came together.

7. the DIGITAL AGENCY
with an EDITORIAL
DEPARTMENT.

8. we create
CONTENT
people want
to SHARE.

9. the SUPERFAN STRATEGY.
How to involve brand fans, create engaging content with them,
and thereby arm them to become powerful advocates.

10. FOR FANS, FAME is the ULTIMATE CURRENCY.

11. INFLUENCER TARGETING
We proposed a three stage effort to draw the crowds.
SUPER FANS
create the good stuff
CASUAL FANS
spread the news
POTENTIAL FANS
kick back and enjoy
25 SuperFans with 1000 followers, who themselves each
have 130 friends = potential audience of 3.25 million.

12. Step 1: Kick off
SUPERFAN
RELATIONSHIPS

13. Step 2: Create
ORIGINAL,
SHAREABLE
CONTENT

14. Step 3: Launch and
support casual fan
SOCIAL HUBS

15. Step 4: Ignite and
sustain multiple
MEANINGFUL
CONVERSATIONS

16. WHAT WE LEARNED RIGHT AWAY
• Superfans don’t want to work for an
advertiser…they want to play with other
creative people. Editorial outreach works.
• Casual fans love to be heard and responded to,
and they love and finding one another. They
can be a surprisingly cohesive unit.
• In the context of a fan hub, fans appreciate
tune-in information as real user service, not
sponsor messaging to be suffered.

17. HANDING OVER the KEYS.
How putting this theory into action quickly led us to new and
exciting ways to involve the fans with the shows they love.

18. SHOW BY SHOW, WE’RE ESTABLISHING DIGITAL CONVERSATIONS.

19. ON-AIR PROVIDES TUNE-IN INFO, AND DRIVES TO DIGITAL.

20. ONLINE, FAN-BASED FILMS ARE SHAREABLE CONVERSATION STARTERS.

21. HIMYM FANS WHO SENT IN
MOTHER’S DAY TWEETS
COULD TUNE IN TO SEE IF
THEIRS MADE IT ON-AIR.

22. THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA,
FANS ARE INVITED TO
DECIDE THE LINEUP OF
SHOW MARATHONS.

23. THE WGNA DIGITAL COMMUNITY SO FAR
GROWTH POTENTIAL
In six months, we’ve gathered 300,000 fans of one show, and have a clear
understanding of the cost to get there…and to grow to 500k, 1m, and beyond.
EXPANDABILITY
We’ve begun the effort with How I Met Your Mother and 30 Rock; other key
shows to follow. We will deploy different content strategies for each.
ENGAGEMENT
Through constant conversation monitoring and real-time responding, we’ve
created real engagement and a motivated, self-reinforcing community.
PRODUCTIVITY
The size of the test case makes it hard to see just how much we’re moving the
needle on audience tune-in. But anecdotal evidence is gathering…

24. RESULTS and NEXT STEPS.
How it’s working so far…and where we’re taking the program in
2012 and beyond.

25. ANECDOTALLY, we
seem to be DRIVING
OFFLINE
BEHAVIOR
“Some of our best
Mother numbers ever—
Sunday reached its highest
A18-34 and A18-49 telecasts
to date!”
—Lisa Gilbert,
audience monitor
at WGNA

26. SCALING THE EFFORT
Year 1 was about gathering each target show’s casual fans into a
responsive, growing community of potential behavior drivers.
Year 2 is about arming
that casual fan base
to influence their
friends and
followers…and
multiply our
potential viewers a
hundredfold.

27. AND SPONSORS CAN JOIN THE PARTY!
Brands can partake in meaningful
conversation with an active and
engaged target audience
Branding “organically” in a social
context allows for enhanced
engagement & instant feedback

28. HOW YOU CAN JOIN THE CONVERSATION
Programs on WGN America offer partners many “meaningful
conversation” opportunities by aligning existing in-program
product placement with relevant social marketing themes

29. END OF STORY
SMILE IF YOU LIKED IT!
Josh Richman
Vice President, Marketing,
WGN America
JoRichman@tribune.com
Keith Blanchard
Group Creative Director,
Story Worldwide
Keith.Blanchard@storyworldwide.com