Lisa Vanderpump, Bravo icon, was heading to a new home on Hulu with her brand-new series Vanderpump Villa. Hulu needed a way to announce her arrival and pull all those avid fans onto the platform. To achieve this, we looked to capitalize on Lisa Vanderpump’s significant social presence and create an innovative, multi-channel activation. To ensure we went above and beyond with this social-first audience, we activated a TikTok “Out of Pocket” extension that aimed to engage audiences beyond the traditional Social Media campaign. In collaboration with Dive, we enabled talent and creators to use our TikTok Branded Effect and have it live beyond their phone screen, showing up on billboards in real time throughout LA & NY. To guarantee highest visibility possible, we chose key areas in downtown LA (The Moxy Digital) and New York (NASDAQ and Midtown Financial) because of their daily foot traffic and unmissable reads. By combining the power of Social with strategic offline placements, we aimed to generate increased interaction and visibility while extending our cast and creator’s 15 minutes of fame.
The entire stunt began with a Branded Effect on TikTok, created specifically for Hulu and Vanderpump Villa. With the goal of generating not only interest in the show but also encouraging users to find and play with the Branded Effect, this was going to need to go bigger. And not just in terms of eyeballs reached, but literally bigger. To help showcase the Branded Effect, show talent and content creators shot fun footage of themselves placed within the Villa that we were able to run beyond TikTok. The custom made assets were prominently featured in our Digital OOH boards in NY & LA, where the Vanderpump cast even saw our ads and posted organically about the execution.
The activation required seamless coordination between multiple teams – Media, Creative, Influencer, and Talent – to ensure all elements were executed on time. Key deliverables included the Branded Effect for talent to use and record, generating Influencer content while negotiating usage rights for DOOH, and collaborating with Media to amplify the campaign as each element developed. As with any activation that involves various teams, touch points, and lawyers, communication was critical to ensure everything kept running smoothly.
One hurdle that emerged during execution was the limited initial fame of the cast. The concept first featured only the new cast of Vanderpump Villa, but when testing we identified that while they generated some interest, they lacked the recognizability of Lisa Vanderpump. To ensure that we built the appropriate level of excitement and reach, the influencer teams brought in beloved creators such as Lauren Ashley Beck, Hannah Kosh, Louis Levanti, and Bomanizer to generate custom content, which ran alongside the Talent videos. This helped not only to extend the life of the campaign but greatly increased overall interest.
Additionally, we ensured that approved content was integrated into the billboards in real-time as they were approved by clients which required an always active war room between Media, Creative, Legal, and Talent. This helped to keep the content relevant and refreshed throughout the flight, boosting awareness without reaching oversaturation thanks to more than 25 unique pieces of creative running in rotation.
While the TikTok userbase was continuing to expand, an execution of this magnitude was beyond what they were used to executing on given the sheer audacity of the concept. The next iteration that’s being planned will move beyond talent and creators and allow any user in real time to show up on live billboards.
Overall the campaign was a massive success. Vanderpump Villa beat awareness goals with subscribers and non-subscribers alike by over 25%, which translated into strong viewership, extensive coverage across Variety and Vanity Fair, and ultimately a Season 2 renewal with Vanderpump Rules star Stassi Schroeder set to join.
This unique activation played a substantial role in the overall success of Vanderpump Villa. The overall activation delivered more than 22MM impressions, overdelivering by 196% because users were so incredibly engaged with the content. This helped decrease efficiency by almost 50%, further extending the entire reach of the Vanderpump campaign. On the billboards themselves, our unique content was played over 15,000 times and achieved an average SOV of over 15%, despite being in the busiest parts of the city that receive hundreds of thousands of visitors daily. Lastly, Brand lift showed a +21% lift in awareness for Vanderpump Villa, well above the Hulu average of +10% which is virtually unheard of for a brand new season 1 IP.
With results arguably more successful than even Lisa herself, it’s not hard to see why Hulu booked another stay in the Villa. And Publicis can’t wait for everyone to see what we have cooked up for next year
