HBO Max’s Legendary celebrates and centers the world of ball culture through an exhilarating reality competition series. To promote and drive buzz around the second season, we were challenged to expand upon the first season’s loyal viewership (primarily QPOC and ballroom communities) while maintaining authenticity around the series.
Our goals of this campaign included:
Ground efforts in celebrating and amplifying ball culture and performers
Tap into incremental audiences to expand reach
Driving awareness and buzz via social media impressions (goal of 1MM), engagement (goal of 1K), and reach (goal of 500K)
Positive sentiment across our audiences
To celebrate the season 2 grand finale of HBO Max’s Legendary, we connected with musical powerhouse, Boiler Room, to create a virtual legendary experience. Pre-recorded at New York City club Good Room, the night brought together the elements of ballroom that make the scene feel alive: The Emcee, the Dancers, and the DJs.
We would seed hype for this legendary experience by leveraging both Legendary and Boiler Room social channels - as well as talent’s personal channels. On premiere day (which immediately followed Legendary’s season 2 finale), we drove audiences to tune in live via Boiler Room’s YouTube premiere channel, to experience the highly anticipated Legendary DJ sets & dancing performances - to close out finale night.
To keep audiences engaged in the days following our event, Boiler Room’s social channels (Instagram & Twitter) posted watch-back reminders with hype clips of the DJ sets & vogue performances to spread excitement and awareness of the event. We continued to drive audiences to Boiler Room’s YouTube channel, where they could view the full sets following the livestream.
In bringing our experience to life, we prioritized building a series that genuinely engaged and centered the ballroom community.
We grounded the event in performances that highlighted QPOC ballroom artists:
The Host: The night was hosted by ballroom’s household name, Gregg Evisu XL, who made the night lively with his unforgettable energy as the dancers and DJs took the stage
The Dancers: We tapped some of Legendary’s most iconic dancers to grace the stage during each set, including: Arturo Miyake-Mugler, Omari Oricci, Milan Garcon, and Zay Lanvin. Each dancer brought the heat with their artistry while the DJs pumped the beat
The DJs: Godfather of vogue-house & Legendary’s resident DJ, MikeQ, headlined an incredible lineup made up of house & club icons including: Jersey club queen Uniiqu3, Atlanta ballroom royalty Leonce, and Kaos b2b Sky LaBeija. Together they illuminated the stage performing legendary sets that would forever go down in Boiler Room history.
We thoughtfully selected the venue as NYC’s Good Room - which has roots within the QTPOC community and provided a safe space for our ballroom performers to give it their all. We also partnered with Human By Orientation (HBO Max’s queer audience initiative) to drive awareness through their social handles.
HBO Max’s Legendary season 2 partnership with Boiler Room successfully celebrated and centered ball culture, drove awareness around the series, and connected Boiler Room’s underground music community to the ballroom.
We grounded our efforts in amplifying ball talent - engaging host Gregg Evisu XL; dancers Arturo Miyake-Mugler, Milan Garcon, et. al.; and DJs MikeQ, Uniiqu3, et. al. - totalling 150K+ followers.
The virtual performances were viewed over 1.5MM times across Boiler Room platforms - with 319K views coming from the livestream alone. We garnered over 1.5MM impressions across social (+50% goal), +1.4K engagements (+44.3%), and +1MM reach (+100%).
