While any social team would love to “go viral”, that was not our objective with this tweet 🙈 Our objective was simply to respond to a timely and major industry moment in a way that only Peacock could. The results, on the other hand, were icing on the cake 🎂
When our competitor’s (*cough* rhymes with fax *cough*) announcement first broke on April 12, stating that they were chopping off the first half of their app’s name, the commentary from industry insiders and fans was strong and swift 👀 Our ears perked up, too, as Peacock was mentioned in that online chatter, with people hoping we would (or wouldn’t) do the same with our name. It was clear that there was an opportunity to capitalize, but it was also clear that the territory was tricky 💭
We spent the next 5 weeks (between the initial newsbreak on 4/12/23 and that competitor’s impending name change launch on 5/22/23) thinking through every angle to pinpoint our next move 🎯 Our team developed several bluesky concepts, debated positioning and lift, and ran this by a few folks for good measure, before arriving at a succinctly worded, text-only tweet ✍️ What we love about what we crafted is that it managed to poke fun at our rival while also putting the joke right back on us. As a brand whose legacy and soul is comedy, but is also establishing itself as its own identity and voice, this was a win/win.
Day-of, we tweeted bright and early, knowing conversation about this change would trend. Our commmunity management team also got to work, monitoring buzz for real-time engagement opportunities with other accounts 💬 Within hours, it was clear our tweet was gaining outsized attention and that we had disrupted the social space! This was a first for us, so yes, we’re peacocking about it 🦚
1 tweet garnered:
Resoundingly positive sentiment from verified accounts to the average fan
Multiple earned media write-ups from Forbes, CBR, Deadline, the New York Post, and other major digital outlets
Multiple phone calls from outlets to our PR/Comms teams asking if we’d been hacked
Highly informal and unofficial response from said competitor that we what we’d done was “cute”
