Our goal for The Wiz Live! – the groundbreaking version of The Wizard of Oz that would be NBC's latest holiday musical production – was to create a shared experience for families across America and to become a vital part of the national conversation. To achieve these lofty goals we developed a social campaign that leveraged original content, interactive activations and the star power of our A-list cast (which included Queen Latifah, Mary J. Blige, David Allen Grier, Uzo Aduba, Amber Riley and many more) to tap into audiences' nostalgia for The Wiz, building buzz and awareness through specific promotions that inspired fans to become evangelists for the show. This hyper-targeted effort created urgency, encouraged conversation, and ultimately drove participation around the show, making The Wiz Live! a social media-record breaking phenomenon and one of the most important television events of 2015.
To achieve this success we focused on 3 key areas that would connect audiences with The Wiz: Nostalgia, Building Anticipation and Live Engagement.
Nostalgia
First, at a strategic level, we developed a voice for our content that reminded fans of their nostalgia for The Wiz while also introducing key segments and mainstream audiences to the show. For example, because actress Stephanie Mills played the iconic Dorothy role in both the original Broadway production and the film, we knew that many potential viewers would find it challenging to accept anyone else in this role. Therefore we orchestrated a symbolic "passing of the torch" between Mills and our new Dorothy, Shanice Williams, by having them sing the show's famous closing song "Home" together as a duet in a video produced specifically for digital audiences. Released on Facebook and YouTube, this piece enjoyed viral success with our target demographics and successfully introduced our Dorothy to old and new fans alike.
Building Anticipation
Second, we developed opportunities to build anticipation in the weeks ahead of the show. These efforts led to the creation of specific digital content that could be released by influencers, pushed out by our star-studded cast, or provided to targeted partners or press outlets for publication. One example of this was having noted photographer and Instagram-influencer Lance Gross create unique portraits of each actor, with his content appearing on his own Instagram account, those of each individual cast member, and in an exclusive feature article in Essence magazine.
Another example was our "No Place Like Home" meme generator, which played off the well-known phrase from The Wizard of Oz franchise with an easy and fun-to-use microsite that allowed users to create their own Instagram-ready images in the style of Lance Gross's photography and to include a personalized message to demonstrate what "Home" meant to them.
Live Engagement
Our final goal was to drive conversation during the live event to create a unique experience for viewers.
In New York, our embedded social producer worked with the social teams of all cast members and our onsite photographer to collect content and share out across their social platforms. Twitter was on set with a photo booth, sharing BTS photos of cast members, dancers, costumes and more. Additionally, we had 3 major influencers – King "Kingsley" Russell, Todrick Hall and Karen Civil – acting as our official social correspondents, roaming the set to give their fans and followers an inside look. Meanwhile in LA our social team gathered real-time coverage of the to live post on social, creating and sharing real time content and engaging with fans, influencers and celebs throughout the show.
Finally, we partnered with Facebook to create a custom status update option with a Yellow Brick Road icon that allowed you to tell your friends that you were "watching The Wiz Live!" while we also worked with Twitter to curate a Twitter Moment to feature highlights and conversation surrounding The Wiz Live! and #TheWiz.
