This project was a social extension of DIRECTV’s commercial campaign, bringing its main characters—the beloved pigeons voiced by Henry Winkler and Steve Buscemi—into a new creative space. To maintain a strong throughline from the original campaign while giving it a fresh social spin, we transformed the pigeons into puppets, allowing for more dynamic and engaging content tailored for digital audiences.
Recognizing the growing popularity of puppets in content, we leaned into this trend to make the pigeons feel even more alive and entertaining in a social-first environment. The main objective was to explore new ways to integrate these characters into DIRECTV’s content, reinforcing their role in the brand’s identity while expanding their presence beyond the commercial.
By adapting the pigeons for social and embracing a visually distinctive, shareable format, we aimed to create content that felt both fresh and connected to the larger campaign—keeping audiences engaged while further cementing the pigeons as recognizable brand icons.
To bring this project to life, we infused pop culture relevance into DIRECTV’s social extension by tapping into the world of reality TV. We featured Sutton Stracke, a fan-favorite from The Real Housewives, and created a parody of the franchise, blending the humor of the pigeons with the signature over-the-top drama that has made Real Housewives a cultural phenomenon.
Since Real Housewives is always trending, this approach allowed us to naturally capture audience attention while reinforcing DIRECTV’s modernized offering. The focus of the content was to highlight that you no longer need a satellite dish to watch DIRECTV, breaking an outdated perception about the brand. Instead, we showed how you can watch from anywhere—with Sutton casually streaming DIRECTV on an iPad, seamlessly integrating the product into the scene.
One of the key challenges was ensuring the parody felt authentic while staying true to the pigeons’ comedic tone. By blending Housewives-style dramatics with the pigeons’ signature banter, we created a piece that felt both fresh and relevant, resonating with reality TV fans and digital audiences who love pop culture-driven content.
By leveraging a culturally relevant format, integrating product messaging seamlessly, and capitalizing on a trending reality TV genre, we crafted a unique, engaging, and highly shareable social extension that reinforced DIRECTV’s modern convenience in a fun and unexpected way.
This video was the most successful post in the entire social campaign to date, exceeding engagement benchmarks and reinforcing the effectiveness of our approach. It became the second highest earner in total engagements, proving that blending humor and pop culture was a winning formula.
On TikTok, the engagement rate soared to 689% above the client’s baseline, demonstrating how well the content resonated with audiences. Additionally, the Instagram collab generated a 20.3x engagement rate lift, further amplifying reach and interaction across platforms. Viewers responded enthusiastically, leaving comments like “Too cute” and “Hilarious 👏”, showing that the parody not only captured attention but also sparked genuine enjoyment and conversation.
By tapping into reality TV culture and seamlessly integrating DIRECTV’s key messaging, we created a highly shareable, entertaining, and impactful social extension that reinforced the brand’s modern convenience while engaging audiences in an authentic way.
