THE 14TH ANNUAL SHORTY AWARDS

The Shorty Awards honor the best of social media and digital. View this season's finalists!
From the 14th Annual Shorty Awards

Rick and Morty: An Interdimensional Social Experience

Winner in Instagram Presence

Finalist in Humor

Entered in Single Post or Activation

Objectives

Listen up, brohs! If there were an award for putting the most effort into not giving a squanch, we’d have won it three years running. It doesn’t matter that we’ve only been smashing it as the social voice of Rick and Morty for a single year; what matters is that in that time we’ve pulled Rick and Morty's social media presence out from the average, raising Adult Swim’s quality of content to the level of their demographic (high AF).

But, like a sophomore with the munchies, too much is never enough. That's why Adult Swim charged us with expanding the series' reach between seasons, and by re-envisioning their entire approach to connecting with viewers via social.

Strategy and Execution

Adult Swim had never worked with an outside agency and were wary of outsiders coming in with off-brand creative, so we had to make sure all of our content was true to the brand’s spirit of iconoclastic subversion. All posts, videos, statics, and sponsored content had to feel slyly self-referential, disruptive, and irreverent, lest our client suffer the slings and arrows of outraged fans.

Leveraging our own fanaticism for the series, we aimed to expand Adult Swim’s audience beyond its core millennial fanbase by strategically engaging Gen-Z viewers with undeniably scroll-stopping content that feels fan driven, rather than brand-led.

That's why we decided to chart a new course, rooting our content in a universal human experience that is as relatable to our core audience of millennials as it is to our growing fanbase of Gen-Z viewers: feeling like the weird kid in the room.

We all know how it feels to be that kid; everyone on our team was once the weird one. Our research led us to connect with Adult Swim viewers by celebrating the unique, the unhinged, and the shared human experience of feeling different. 

Our original YouTube supercut of 3 seconds from every Rick and Morty episode became a viral and press sensation with hardcore fans.  

Results

By elevating the weird and unusual to a position of celebrated prominence, we've helped the Adult Swim brand re-envision their entire approach to social content and digital ad-sales. 

We transformed Adult Swim’s social presence to feel less like marketing, and more like a natural extension of the network; a social destination for Adult Swim’s unique brand of humor.

At the end of our run, not only did the client renew our relationship, they expanded our role to cover the brand itself, and every series under its umbrella. We’re not flexible enough to toot our own horn (we leave that to certain podcasters), but we think the numbers speak for themselves…

513K New Followers 

29.5% Increase in Engagement

And a lot of press attention for our new original content: 

 

https://comicbook.com/anime/news/rick-and-morty-every-episode-supercut

https://screenrant.com/rick-morty-every-episode-compilation-video/

https://bleedingcool.com/tv/rick-and-morty-every-ep-in-3-second-bites-because-why-not/

https://gossipchimp.com/3-seconds-of-every-rick-morty-episode-compiled-in-1-video/

https://cloutnews.com/3-seconds-of-every-rick-morty-episode-in-1-video/

comicbook.com-news-rick-and-morty-every-episode-video

https://california18.com/hilarious-rick-and-morty-video 

 

Media

Entrant Company / Organization Name

Movement Strategy, Adult Swim

Link

Entry Credits