Social Media Campaign Review: Comedy Central’s Suitor Challenge

Viacom 18's India operated channel Comedy Central introduced what can be called one of the most US watched television series of 2011-- Suits. The new season of the series premiered in India recently and is being heavily promoted on the digital properties of the channel.

Objective

The television series is already a hit worldwide. The channel wants to familiarize the Indian viewers with the characters and plot, considering the new season is hitting off with the Indian channel for the first time. Creating a quiz application to promote the show and throwing out some quirks are great ways of getting the fanbase interested in the show.

Execution

The brand page on Facebook has made an application named SUITS Challenge to test the 'SQ' of fans about the new show. This quiz app comprises of 6 levels of questions, each level being named after a character of the show. As you pass each level, clues to the answers emerge under the questions. These clues are stored at other digital platforms like Pinterest, YouTube and Twitter pages of the brand.

Participants win Suits merchandise which seems like a perfect prize for any Suits fan.

On Twitter, a hash-tag is created #SuitsS2OnCC to promote the quiz. Dialogues from the sitcom, featuring the hash-tag are being used to create further interest. A question in the app directly leads the user to tweet with #IfIwereJessica, enhancing the use of Twitter as a platform.

Knowledge show down..show them who's Boss! #IfIWereJessica

— samantha barrett (@Samantha_AB) July 5, 2013

 

#IfIWereJessica i wudnt believe Trevor cos i dont like ppl messing with my own but at the same time investigated into Mike's background

— Kirtan Mankad (@kirtanmankad) July 11, 2013

 

Think you belong in the ‘Specter’cular league of Suitors? Take this SUITS quiz & find out! http://t.co/j0JY2wf3nc #SuitsS2OnCC

— Comedy Central India (@ComedyCentralIn) July 9, 2013

Positives:

One of the most evident and innovative parts of the application is that the user gets redirected to various other platforms in an attempt to find clues. Linking a Facebook campaign with other social media platforms is rarely done by brands, who mostly link Twitter and Facebook together. This is a very interesting attempt by the brand to create interest.

The app is full of quirky lines which create a sense of excitement among users. Through the questions, they test the knowledge of the users about the sitcom. Efforts have been made to ensure that every question is different. There are direct questions, along with fill in the blanks and complete the dialogue (through a tweet) to add to the variety of questions. The Facebook page is doing very well in promoting this app.

Scope for Improvement:

Considering the fan base volume is 1.4 million, the quiz hasn't really generated enough interest, while the hash-tag has not created much buzz on Twitter either. Very few users have tweeted with it and the brand has failed to fall back on 17K+ followers. An interesting campaign could have been rolled out on Twitter promoting the app whereas only dialogues from the show have been used to entice a user.

Conclusion:

Overall, a pretty simple yet powerful campaign has been executed by Comedy Central. Using an old school technique of a quiz based contest, a fresh approach towards execution has been attempted.