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AdweekMedia Plan of the Year: OMD US wins Best Use of Mobile

June 14, 2009

By Dan Oullette

Tune in to any episode of The CW's Gossip Girl and the mobile phone is omnipresent. It has to be. How else can private-school socialites engage in nonstop chatty intrigue and catty texting? With mobile devices positioned center stage, the trendsetting show not only reflects the social–tech climate of its young adult audience, but it also opens a new vista for enticing viewers to communicate beyond the prime–time TV drama experience. Instead of merely watching in passive mode, what could be better for young viewers than to participate, virtually, on their own? They can, courtesy of show–commentary text messages from the narrator (the eponymous Gossip Girl herself) synced up with the on–screen dialogue. And then, of course, fans can text about the story line within their own social networks.

Building the Gossip Girl buzz, boosting its ratings and bringing the show to the next tier of popularity were the goals of agency OMD when it developed the mobile–media campaign for Gossip Girl's season–two premiere that aired Sept. 1, 2008. As a result of its innovative Web site and widget strategies for mobile phones, the agency helped the premiere to outperform the 2007 season average by 44 percent in adults 18–34, and 35 percent in total viewers. Gossip Girl enjoyed its best ratings ever with adults 18–34, women 18–34 and women 18–49. It also outperformed ABC, CBS and NBC by scooping up 3.4 million viewers — 1 million more than the series' debut–vseason average. For its mobile initiative that was one part of several campaigns for the show, OMD receives the Media Plan of the Year for Best Use of Mobile.

"We wanted to create a medium platform that was more engaging than TV, print or radio by capturing the environment of the audience," says Greg Castronuovo, managing director of OMD West and head of the entertainment division that oversees The CW account. "Gossip Girl is hip, cool and popular, so our team set out to use strategies that were relevant to the brand of the show. Mobile is in a nascent stage, so this wasn't so much about reach as it was getting people to talk interactively through that platform."

Castronuovo and his team brainstormed ways in which to reach the target audience. "Based on our research, we found that young women are passionate about using their mobile phones, whether talking or text–ing," he says. "The mobile phone is now a valuable accessory to their wardrobe. So we decided to use that medium to target the right audience to get more people talking about the most–talked–about show on TV."

Calling Gossip Girl "a digital–friendly show," Rick Haskins, executive vp for marketing and brand strategy at The CW, says that when figuring out the media plan for the show's premiere, the network sought a strategy that "was organic to the show, not cookie–cutter. We asked OMD to find ways where the audience could engage with the show through their digital devices. They came up with a variety of online applications to make that possible."

OMD worked in lockstep with The CW in devising the mobile campaign, then set out to seek partners. A key collaborator, says Castronuovo, was the McLean, Va.–based widget–creating company Clearspring that designed a "get gossip" widget aligned with the RSS feed for the mega–magazine People. The widget was also promoted as a mobile application on several Web sites, including the Clearspring Social Distribution Network, The CW, MySpace and Facebook. In addition, Web banners drove traffic to the mobile application of The CW's Web site mobile platform as well as the Gossip Girl page on CWTV.com. Plus, OMD utilized DoubleClick's Dart for Advertisers, which offered third–party visibility into how well the mobile campaign performed.

The campaign's truly unique component, however, would allow viewers to be engaged in the Gossip Girl season premiere by receiving text messages sent in real time as the show's plot unfolded. Viewers used their mobile devices to access the live commentary of Kristen Bell, Gossip Girl's narrator. "The viewers did a lot of texting during the show," says Haskins.

"Studies indicate the younger audience multitasks while watching TV. They're involved with social networks, they blog, they post text messages. So we figured, Why not be a part of that? Any time you show up in the mobile medium space the way we did, those people appreciate it. They like the idea that we know who they are and how to reach them. Many advertisers don't get that concept."

Thanks to the incorporation of mobile devices, the show's fans brought new viewers into the mix. The OMD campaign resulted in a sizable number of widget and application downloads as well as hits and friends on The CW's community pages. The buzz of season one became all that much louder before season two launched.

Haskins says that The CW has discovered that a show like Gossip Girl has "a communication currency that people love to talk to their friends about. It captures the media attention of consumers." He's so pleased with OMD's campaign for season two that he's already looking ahead to season three. Will the initiative continue? "Absolutely," Haskins says. Not that he'll get into much detail right now. "Let's just say," he ventures, "you'll see some interesting new applications and a lot of new fun things."