Social Media Campaign Review: LOST by Zee Café

Zee Café brings LOST; one of the cult America TV hits to Indian audiences! Zee Café launched a social media campaign to promote 'LOST'.  The campaign was launched in June and trended with two hashtags #TheIsland and #LOST on Twitter and Facebook.

Season 1 of LOST was scheduled to hit Indian televisions on 23rd July, 2013 but the campaign for the show has been up since June on various online networks.

Objective:

With the immense popularity of the show, Zee Café was expecting to reach new heights in terms of viewership of season 1 to 9 of LOST with their exciting digital campaign in place for the same. They initiated a contest in the name of #TheIsland. Zee Café started promoting this hashtag since June 29.

They had been doing similar campaigns to promote their other shows. Previously, a similar campaign was done for the show Gossip Girl.

Execution:

To promote the show, a microsite had been created where the users can take part in an exciting contest. Drawing inspiration from the show, the theme of the microsite is a mysterious Island that has magical powers. All users are welcome on the island, once they enter the island they have an option of submitting their details and generate a boarding pass. This boarding pass will have a unique code.

The person with the winning code gets to go on an all expenses paid trip for two to an exotic island.  The idea was not to build an engaging app or a microsite but to ensure that all those taking part in the contest come onto the channel and watch the first episode of LOST. This is where the contest took a twist. The winning code, which will be randomly selected, was not announced on the microsite, nor was the winner contacted, but was flashed on the TV screen during the first episode of LOST.

Zee Café executed this campaign in a very admirable manner. LOST was promotem on their various social networking sites:They launched a promotional video of LOST, a sneak peek of 31 seconds on July 11 which got 3,47,194 views!

Besides updating their cover photo, they introduced this campaign very early on their Facebook and Twitter and kept reminding users about it through various creative images and responsive questions. Here's a view:

On Twitter, Zee Café created contests by trending #Island and #LOST simultaneously. They asked viewers 10 questions in order to promote the show's first screening on 23rd. The winners were announced during the first show of LOST. They got great responses from their followers, showcased as under:

Positives:

This social media campaign was launched in a very innovative manner. Zee Café, besides conducting a thorough offline promotion, also executed a well-planned online campaign. Viewers were kept well informed from the beginning. All contests announcements were made prior to the execution. Even on 23rd when the contest was going on air on Twitter, Zee Café took an initiative of also announcing it on their Facebook page, so that more users could participate in it. Here is a picture for the same:

Twitter reactions show that people were more excited to watch the series rather than winning the contest, which made this campaign a success as the agenda was achieved even before the show hit the TV screens.

Also the concept of announcing the winners on TV during the first episode was great. The viewers who were solely interested in winning the prize also watched the show. Thus the contest encouraged users to actually tune into the show and sample the content.

The microsite also contains details on the show along with catchy quotes by the cast. All participants are informed on the website as well as via email that they will have to tune in to Zee Café to watch out for the winning number. Viewers of the show could also participate in an exclusive chat for all LOST fans chatroom on the iCouch app.

As already discussed, the promotion on social media platforms started long back i.e, one month in advance. It is mostly difficult to maintain the enthusiasm in a one month long promotion. But the organizers maintained the same which is clearly visible on their Facebook and Twitter profiles. On Facebook, they kept posting creative images with different outlooks about LOST and engaged the audience in conversations. Their dedication made this campaign successful.

Scope for improvement:

The only thing that I find less charming were the 10 questions that were asked during the Twitter contest. Asking 10 questions was too long drawn, and it could have been wrapped up in 4-5 questions. This series of 10 questions would have made participants disinterested after 4th question.

Now that the show is already launched, they could have done something to spice it up and keep up the excitement.

Conclusion:

This campaign was an overall hit. It garnered an overwhelming response fro the users.