From 2005 to 2008, Nickelodeon aired Avatar: The Last Airbender. At the show’s conclusion, Avatar fans were a formative group across the web, enthusiastic and vocal about their love for the show. In winter 2011, fans got what they wanted when plans for the next iteration of Avatar were cemented. The new Legend of Korra spinoff was set for an April 2012 premiere date. Nickelodeon’s marketing team was tasked with two main objectives. First, to migrate Avatar fandom to the new Legend of Korra series. Second, to leverage superfan excitement to bring in a new audience for Korra. Our social campaign activated fans in 2 phases. We launched “Korra Nation" - a gamified fan club that gave fans exclusive access to content and prizes. Then KorraNation .com - a microsite that challenged fans to unlock the premiere online, weeks before airing on TV, by reaching 100K social actions. Both pieces received an unprecedented response and proved to be more successful than we could have imagined.The Legend of Korra deserves to win for Best Viral Campaign, Best Use of Gamification in a Social Media Campaign & Best Use of Social Media for Television because we successfully ignited audiences across the web with a rewarding, fan-focused campaign. Our first tactic, the Korra Nation fan club, put super-fans first-in-line to view never-before-seen content housed on Tumblr. Members were alerted of new content via email -- and by using technology built by SocialToaster, we gamified the experience, enabling fans to earn points for sharing the content on social networks in just one click. Points acquired earned fans prizes -- like a trip to meet the creators at Comic-Con. To officially introduce Korra Nation to fans, Korra creators Mike & Bryan made a video announcement. On the 7th anniversary of Avatar, we launched by seeding the video to the top Avatar fan site. Less than 24 hours after we announced Korra Nation, the club had 10,000 members, and earned more online chatter than that night’s episode of American Idol. To date, our membership exceeds 80,000. Content was shared by members over 250,000 times and generated 1 million views in 6 just weeks. Our second tactic, KorraNation .com, gave fans a challenge: If fans reached 100,000 new likes, shares and tweets, we promised to unlock the first two episodes on KorraNation .com weeks before its April 14th on-air premiere date. Fans successfully reached the goal and we streamed the premiere of Korra from March 24th to March 26th. The site had 417,000 unique visitors that weekend without paid advertising, and we gained over 130,000 Facebook likes. KorraNation .com received about 2 million online mentions per day that weekend and earned more chatter than the season premiere of Mad Men. Ultimately we activated a huge fan base for the show. The Legend of Korra premiere scored a strong 4.5 million total viewers, ranking as basic cable’s number-one kids’ show and top animated program for the week with total viewers.
Case study video (password = nick): https://vimeo.com/46062661, Korra Nation Tumblr: http://korranation.tumblr.com, Nickelodeon's Debut of The Legend of Korra Draws 4.5 Million Viewers: http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2012/04/17/debut-of-nickelodeons-the-legend-of-korra-draws-4-5-million-viewers/129568/
