The overarching goal for Season 2 of Syfy's original series Dominion in July 2015 was to bring back the viewers from Season 1 and lookalike viewers. Season 1 gave Syfy and Glow a healthy runway from which to craft a high-end social story that was visually arresting to boost engagement and sharing among fans. We wanted to stabilize Season 2 viewership by bringing back those Season 1 viewers and lookalikes to engage with Dominion's social media properties.
The objective was to use the new and improved visual aesthetic of the show and its related assets, graphics and images, such as gorgeous photography, to convey the new tone of Season 2 and to get fans and new viewers to engage with the series on a different level than Season 1. The design of every element was deliberately rendered with a more artistic sensibility as a way of signaling the difference between the first and second seasons, both from the look and feel perspective as well as the energy of the action within the series, which was a departure from Season 1.
We encouraged fans to catch up on Season 1 by exploring the show's complex mythology in bite-size portions. We wanted to use eye-catching creative to get people to know these characters through compelling designs and utilize the series' beautiful and powerful imagery to draw fans and new viewers to the show. The artwork was gallery worthy, so we intended to apply the same kind of art and beauty in the social platforms to elevate the perception of the show.
We also aimed to bring the intense action, central conflicts, themes of destruction and shocking revelations to fans' social streams through content that felt premium, looked both modern and rooted in history as a nod to the biblical references in the series.
To help create excitement for the return of the series and then to keep momentum going as viewers became more invested during the run of the second season, we phased the rollout of our social campaign.
Part of the pre-premiere strategy was to encourage fans to re-watch the first season and new potential fans to sample and catch up. We started by repurposing and redesigning pieces from Syfy.com's interactive "Guide to Vega" from Season 1 to match the look and feel of the new season and be optimized for use on social platforms. Each piece of action-packed creative encouraged the audience to click through to catch up. We also created a Character Map to explain how all the characters were connected so fans could revisit their favorites and potential viewers could get familiar with the players.
Inspired by the popularity of "Swipe Up to Fly" creative on Twitter around superheroes, we adapted the participatory design concept to leverage the angels and all the flight and wing imagery connected to Dominion and to encourage user participation and interaction. We created four executions and paired them with catch-up messaging. We brought back the concept for the finale, when we placed major influencers' avatars in the Dominion Swipe Up to Fly asset so that they could share it with their followers.
Bridging both the pre-premiere and in season timeframes, we created 10 Storygraph videos, which featured quotes from main characters from the new season to act as teasers.
In season, each day a new episode premiered, we released a highly designed Quote Leaks video that contained a line from that night's episode with a call to action for fans to guess who said the quote. While the show aired, we published the reveal in real-time so fans could see if they guessed correctly.
Based on what we saw fans connecting with during the season, we created a Video Mashup of all the wings flying and landing throughout the season, which we seeded out to fan influencers with large followings as a way to thank them for their support which they could in turn share with their followers to drive anticipation for the finale.
Partially driven by the campaign's highly designed and visually arresting creative, the second season of Dominion was a huge social media success. Facebook Likes saw an increase of 13.63% while Twitter followers increased by 35.37%. Overall, both audiences were immensely engaged with the content we shared. Creative featuring main characters including Michael, Gabriel, Alex, and Noma outperformed all other content week after week. A large passionate fan base was activated with live-tweeting each episode.
During pre-premiere on Facebook, catch-up link posts encouraging fans to binge-watch the first season of Dominion performed at top levels when coupled with custom embedded creative. In season, we saw static quote cards, episodic clips, tune-in content, and catch-up links perform at top levels.
On Twitter, Swipe-Up To Fly was a hit amongst fans during pre-premiere. The audience loved seeing their favorite angels take flight. In season, Twitter content consistently performed well, including static quote cards featuring main characters, GIFs with CTAs, tune-in content, and catch-up linked Tweets. High-performing Dominion storygraphs expanded upon a static moment in time — telling a story beyond what is seen in a singular instance. Sharing creative that featured wings performed well and tremendously increased fan engagement. Live-tweeting Dominion each week increased overall engagement and follower growth for the account. By replying to fans with relevant show GIFs, we were able to develop a strong relationship with our fans. #Dominion landed in the top five most talked TV series hashtag week after week for 10 consecutive weeks.
