A tornado full of sharks is too special to only come once a year. GLOW and Syfy saw an opportunity to turn the movie franchise into something more - a way of life. As Sharknado draws its inspiration from pop culture tropes, GLOW and Syfy doubled down on this concept on social.
The goal was to not just keep the lights on between summer releases, but make Sharknado an active voice in all things pop culture. Through live tweets, Sharknado was to provide social commentary and a fun, light-hearted shark-ified viewpoint on cultural events throughout the year. From the Super Bowl to the Oscars, Sharknado needed to be there to stay top of mind and remind people why they love a tornado full of sharks in the first place.
This was all to create momentum and relevance leading into the next installment of the shark saga, Sharknado 4: The Fourth Awakens.
To make Sharknado continue chomping away at fan's attention, GLOW and Syfy needed to look at what was attention worthy. The first step was to create a calendar of pop culture events throughout the year for Sharknado to "shark-ify." Everything from award shows to sporting events to movie releases were on the table, where nothing was safe from a Sharknado POV.
With that schedule in place, a team was put together to be able to keep the sharks moving. Strategists, designers, and community managers met regularly to discuss the next event, but keeping the team fluid enough to be able to move quickly on pop culture moments that would bubble to the surface. That could be a funny tweet or a custom made shark-fied GIF, however Sharknado always had a point of view or a comment to take a bite out of trending conversations.
During larger events (Super Bowl, etc), the team expanded into a full on real time social strike team. The live event team worked rapidly to shark-ify any moment in real time. GLOW developed a proprietary system for adding our client's Sharknado visuals onto non-owned live video content in real time and ready to be shared on social. This was everything from adding sharks to a funny Oscars reaction shot to joining trending conversations with a shark-centric point of view. Shark content flooded feeds of the event viewers, with Sharknado keeping pace with content as quickly as the live event was airing.
After the event was over, Sharknado had a share in the conversation, building loyalty and most of all an expectation to have fun commentary for the next pop culture moment, keeping fans coming back for more.
Our off-season strategy resulted in 450%+ increase in Sharknado 4 conversation on Twitter, when compared to Sharknado 3.
Furthermore, Sharknado 4 saw a 3.2% growth in social conversation volume, after back to back years of -34.1% and -43.8% decrease in volume experienced from each previous installment.
The live-tweets of the Academy Awards, Golden Globes, SAG Awards, and Super Bowl garnered 1.1MM organic impressions, and TV insider deemed us "social media geniuses" for the activation.
