There's no greater evidence of the strength of Entertainment Weekly as a brand than the annual Comic-Con convention in San Diego. Once a refuge for spandex-clad escapists, it's now big business—and EW occupies an unchallenged spot at the center of the event. EW's online readership and social following are among the hungriest audiences in the world for Comic-Con related content, so we wanted to bring our all-access status at Comic-Con directly to our readers via social media. At the end of San Diego Comic-Con 2014, EW delivered a truly unique experience, not only for our social following, but for our online readership and the entire Comic-Con audience.
There's no greater evidence of the strength of Entertainment Weekly as a brand than the annual Comic-Con convention in San Diego. Once a refuge for spandex-clad escapists, it's now big business—and EW occupies an unchallenged spot at the center of the event. EW's online readership and social following are among the hungriest audiences in the world for Comic-Con related content, so we wanted to bring our all-access status at Comic-Con directly to our readers via social media. With the help of Related Noise technologies and Phhhoto, EW set up an animated GIF booth within our exclusive Comic-Con studio, where the conference's most sought after talent could give fans a candid look at their SDCC experience. Using Related Noise's platform, EW's social media team was able to deliver the GIFs via Twitter to users talking about those specific movies, shows and actors in real time. By tracking hashtags and keywords, we were able to determine who was most likely to be interested in the GIFs at hand, at that very second. GIFs were also automatically added to a landing page on EW.com, where site visitors could then take social actions of their choice within the hub. GIFs were also repurposed as galleries on EW.com for extra social promotion.
Through this partnership EW was able to tap into real-time conversations about the celebrities making GIFs, and determine which fans were hungry for a look at what their favorite celebrities were up to at SDCC and then deliver. The response was extremely positive, with tweets delivered to fans receiving a 97% RT rate, and 19 of EW's top 20 engaging tweets of the entire conference being direct deliveries of GIFs to fans. GIFs were RT'd by dozens of official accounts, including Game of Thrones, actress Maisie Williams, actor Ben McKenzie, Reign, and more. We used our existing social presence to spread the word about the collection of GIFs being populated on EW.com, closing the loop, driving traffic and proving even more opportunity for organic social action. At the end of San Diego Comic-Con 2014, we delivered a truly unique experience, not only for our social following, but for our online readership and the entire Comic-Con audience
The results: