Skins puts its audience in the picture

DESCRIPTION

Skins is a unique home grown E4 drama about the lives of a young group of teens in Bristol. It was written and co-created by teenagers and the approach of the marketing campaign was to mirror this behaviour. The central idea was to create a community that really interacts and contributes to the show through user generated content.

The activity started in November with building a core community of fans online. Above the line joined the mix 10 days before broadcasting the show using movie launch tactics of impactful outdoor and press formats. The community was built by seeding exclusive content within online communities and through a partnership with MySpace.

Members of the online community were invited to star in the trailer and receive regular e-newsletters with exclusive content and information about Skins. They were incentivised to contribute to the show via a series of competitions.

The winners of one contest had their version of the Skins logo used on various marketing collateral such as the e-newsletter and aired on E4 itself. A second competition allowed consumers to create a music track to be used in episode five of the series while another offered the chance to style the Skins characters in a fashion shoot that was featured in More magazine.

Two further competitions offered a chance to create a short character animation, and the show has teamed up with radio station Kiss to invite fans to remix the Gossip soundtrack to the trailer and have it released alongside the re-release of the single. Inspired by the wild party in the trailer, the members of the community were rewarded for their involvement with a truly debauched launch party and premiere screening.

The show launched on January 25 with an audience of 1.6 million viewers and awareness of 86%, 20% of which came via online. In addition, more than thirty-five thousand consumers are actively interacting with the show online, and the show has over 35,000 friends on MySpace. Fans are also making their own trails and ads for the show and posting them online. Viewing figures of this consumer-generated content now tops 20,000.

If the show gets recommissioned then the plan is to keep the community going and encourage participants to contribute to an even greater degree.

IMAGES