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.
Our in-world character accounts for Alex and Henry on IG were a big hit with fans, reaching over +125K organic followers combined in the first 24 hours. Our followers immersed themselves in role-play engaging with these accounts as if they were real, and fangirling with each other over cute couple moments / easter eggs. Along with pre-recorded book-to-screen EPK pieces, this strategy helped satiate the fan appetite for more content amid industry-wide strikes.
We also strategically encouraged FOMO within our audience base by dropping exclusive BTS to a close friends "press room" that resulted in hundreds of followers begging to be let in. Furthermore we conducted book scavenger hunts on IG Stories to eventize fan screenings and organized a watch party on X during the week of premiere, which garnered over +20K organic fan tweets and over +22M total organic impressions.
Our grassroots CM effort to expand outside of the title accounts and seed exclusive BTS content and easter eggs through fan pages also received a lot of positive attention. The playful and flirty banter between us and RWRB Updates, the largest of the fan pages, 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.
