Home Brew partnered with HBO Max to deliver a premium and fan-servicing social media campaign to promote the 3rd season of DC’s Titans. With the show moving from the DC Universe streaming service to its new home on HBO Max, this campaign aimed to deliver an elevated yet insider experience to existing fans while also attracting new fans. The campaign was designed to emphasize the increased production value of the show and build a deep connection with the fanbase through community management and leveraging an incredibly popular ensemble cast. Home Brew focused on fan-service content and building relationships with the community to achieve the campaign goal of making Titans one of HBO Max’s most-watched and most talked-about series of 2021.
Titans Season 3 was a unique campaign due to a number of factors that heavily influenced the strategy. It was the first DC Universe show to have its season debut on HBO Max, it included a large ensemble cast and it had a passionate international fanbase while initially only being available to US subscribers. Being in-the-know and understanding the fanbase was the most important part of this campaign.
Being that this was the 3rd season (and first on HBO Max) this cast already had a ton of chemistry and excitement to help promote the series on their social media networks. To channel this excitement, we produced a series of takeovers on the Titans official Instagram account that gave fans an unprecedented amount of transparency and interaction with the cast members.
In total, we executed a total of 6 takeovers throughout the season. The first set of takeovers involved a Q&A with a few of the series’ stars Brenton Thwaites (Nightwing) and Anna Diop (Starfire). In this takeover, we sourced questions from the community using Instagram’s Questions sticker tool and curated these for Brenton and Anna to answer individually. They provided high-quality, engaging answers and we branded each of the videos with text and graphic overlays while tagging the original poster of the questions. Fans had a lot of fun with their responses, downloading the videos and sharing them on other social networks. To ensure these answers weren’t lost in Instagram Stories 24 hour timeline, we made a Highlight of all the responses so fans could keep going back to these answers whenever they wanted.
For the next few takeovers, we enlisted cast members Alan Ritchson (Hawk) and Savannah Welch (Commissioner Gordon) to completely take over the channels by giving them full access to post behind the scenes personal photos and videos to the official Titans’ Instagram account. To cap off each of the takeovers, they hosted an Instagram Live AMA where they answered fan questions in real time and gave their thoughts on the show, the comics and life in general.
For the finale we combined the power of our Titans and hosted two group takeovers. On the day of the finale, Brenton Thwaites took over the Titans Instagram account again for a season finale watchalong on Instagram Live but this time he was joined by Showrunner Greg Walker and castmates Teagan Croft (Raven) and Conor Leslie (Donna Troy). They provided real time commentary by watching the show together and engaging with the fans in real time.
For part two of the finale, Damaris Lewis (Blackfire) took over the Titans Instagram account and was joined in her Instagram Live by her character’s love interest Superboy played by Joshua Orpin. Despite being in different parts of the world (US and Australia) Damaris and Josh were able to have a delightful conversation with the fans before dovetailing the end of the takeover into the finale’s official Watch Party on Twitter where Damaris also participated with many of her castmates.
Takeovers were such a hit with the community that we had fans begging for more and tried to include as many cast members as possible. All in all, the takeovers helped build a deeper connection with the fanbase through community management and talent involvement. Throughout the campaign, the Titans social accounts saw an impressive 32% page growth, acquiring 236k new fans, 10.7M total social engagements across all channels and 338M total impressions. As a result of our campaign, Titans became one of HBO Max’s most-watched and most talked-about series of 2021.
