To support the second season premiere of Banshee on Cinemax, Cinemax and GLOW wanted to do something edgy and groundbreaking in the social video space to attract first season viewers back to the series. We also wanted to give fans a reason to spread the word about Season 2 as well as to catch the eye of new viewers.
With a first season having already aired and the popular release of the Banshee: Origins comic book featuring the prequel story having been released with it, the team knew they had valuable, organic assets available to them. In addition, they knew they had a built-in fanbase that was already familiar with the show. The idea was struck to create native, premium content for Vine, utilizing both the contents of the comic book as well as new video written and shot exclusively for this campaign. The idea was especially timely and original since at the time (first quarter 2014), no one else was doing so for a television show, much less a brand in any category.
To appeal to existing Banshee fans as well as to attract new viewers prior to Season 2, Cinemax and GLOW created two series of exclusive Vine videos. One series leveraged all-new video content around the show's characters while the other mined the creative within the companion comic book—both of which would serve as dynamic and unique extensions to the show's narrative. In this campaign, the medium of Vine was definitely part of the message to both the audience and the industry, especially since Cinemax and GLOW were the first to use Vine in this way.
The character-driven Vines were written by co-creator and executive producer Jonathan Tropper and Banshee director Greg Yaitanes and shot on the set with the entire cast, using the app itself on an iPhone. In each Vine, the actors expressed the inner thoughts of the characters, giving fans exclusive insight into what made their characters tick and hints at what they'd be doing in Season 2. Because the videos were shot this way, they had a gritty, almost realistic feel. This style was chosen deliberately in order to appeal to the Banshee audience by giving the sense that these were found moments with real people, instead of television characters or over-produced pieces of commercial content.
The #BansheeOrigins comic vines were created to be living digital representations of the Banshee: Origins comic book, which was released for free tied to the premiere of Season 1. Cinemax and GLOW selected the best pages and ported to Vine in a dynamic short video, bringing the backstory of the series and its key characters to life in an arresting, eye-catching way.
Both Vine series caught the attention of industry and consumer press: The Vine video campaign received noteworthy press pickup from Mashable and AdWeek as well as on Access Hollywood.
