With the original novel having a strong following on BookTok, Red, White, & Royal Blue's social campaign focused on activating the existing fandom while creating maximum buzz and conversation to intrigue new audiences and elevate the launch of the film into a major cultural moment. Faced with union strikes and online chatter that the two leads lacked chemistry, our main objective was to position Alex and Henry's story as the can't-miss romance of the summer, while creating a robust and expansive online community for audiences to rally together on.
Assuming the tone and voice of a witty and authentic fellow fan, we forged an emotional connection with our audience through unique and fan-forward strategies.
The highlights of our CM strategy were two in-world character IG accounts where we posted from the POV of our male leads, dropping easter eggs in real time following the chronology of events in the film. This helped build anticipation for book fans while getting our new followers invested in our main couple, and the audience immersed themselves in role-play acting as if these were actual Alex & Henry accounts, fangirling over cute couple moments. Amidst industry strikes, these accounts helped counter the ever-increasing appetite for more content.
Our organic and authentic first-person voice also shone in our grassroots effort to expand outside of our own handles and engage with fan accounts. On X, our audience cheered on the rapport that developed between the official title account and RWRB Updates, the biggest of the fan pages. The playful and flirty banter eventually even earned us a ship name - Primedates.
Red, White, & Royal Blue became the #1 most-streamed movie on Amazon Prime Video, trending in 32 markets at launch and hitting the top 5 positions in several of them. With a talkability score of 141,821 and 700.7M total engagements in the first 28 days, it blew release comps out of the water.
The two character IG accounts reached over +125K organic followers combined in the first 24 hours, peaking at +700K over the period of the campaign. In total, we amassed a social audience of over 1.1M+ organically and 1.1M+ direct mentions.
