Hollyoaks

THE MISSION:
Telegraph Hill were drafted in for 21 weeks to oversee a revamp of the Hollyoaks brand, pull off a special autumn event and re-engage a flagging online audience.

THE CLIENT:
Hollyoaks is the country’s most popular teen soap, running five nights a week on Channel 4. Launched in 1995, the show has been running non-stop ever since, attracting Channel 4′s largest annual advertising spend for companies targeting 16-24s. Hollyoaks is made in Liverpool by Lime Pictures.

THE WORK:
We worked with the existing online team to change the way they operated, throwing the Channel 4 tick list of deliverables out of the window and entering a period of real creativity.

We ran the online team like a newspaper. There was a clear editorial line each week. Staff took ownership of their features, from pitching to final upload. This ensured a consistent voice throughout and gave the team a ‘show and tell’ feeling, allowing them to clearly show off successful ideas as their own work. This created a culture of creative competition in the team, with everyone trying to outdo each other for the best content. These incentives revitalised the team and added to the quality of the content.

We also enforced some strict house rules – fewer exclamation marks, no asking for retweets on Twitter, consistent formatting of Facebook posts, etc.

Finally, a kickass new video created by Telegraph Hill heralded the arrival of new characters and a change in tone for the online offering.

SOCIAL SPACES:
Hollyoaks lives on its own E4 website, plus profiles on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. But what is the point of each space? We clearly defined their roles.

• Website – The heart of the activity, no passing traffic. Everyone here has made the decision to enter our world, so feel let’s be completely obsessive, completely committed and go hell for leather with our discussions about the show.
• Facebook – Be funny, be passionate… but be aware of passing traffic. Try and lure them in and push them to the website for more.
• Twitter – Use Twitter to get excited, banter with the audience, break news and tweet along with episodes, pushing fans to deeper content on other platforms where relevant.
• YouTube – Hosting videos on YouTube means they can be embeded into Facebook, making fans much more likely to play them in their news feeds. There’s also a higher ‘stumble across’ factor and they’re more easily shared.

THE BIG EVENT:
We worked with the Hollyoaks writers and PR dept to develop a cross-platform event that would generate headlines, surprise the audience and realign Hollyoaks as younger, cooler and more relevant to British teens.

This event was #Wretch32Invasion.

We took #1 selling rap artist Wretch 32 and hosted a secret gig in London. The gig was not branded as Hollyoaks but as a ’4Music Special’ and tickets were given away for free exclusively through Ch4 branded spaces, e.g. T4 Facebook page, 4Music on Twitter, etc.

Fans arrived for the free secret gig. Here we pulled some fans aside, asking them to film the gig from the crowd using our cameras and return their footage at the end.

Wretch 32 smashed it, performing an incredible set. During the song ‘Forgiveness’ the stage was crashed by a man… Bart from Hollyoaks!

With the blessing of Wretch 32 he proceeded to sing a love song to win back his girl, Sinead. The stage invasion was all totally in character, and formed a key storyline in the show. Little did they know, but every fan in the room was part of an episode of Hollyoaks that would air that Friday on Channel 4.

When Wretch 32 revealed this fact the crowd went wild. The next day #Wretch32Invasion was trending globally on Twitter, Wretch 32′s album went up three places in the chart and the Friday episode’s viewing figures shot up by a third.

Plus the fans with the handycams in the crowd had their footage included in the show and even got their name in the credits! It was the first time a British soap has been shot by its fans, and reaffirmed Hollyoaks as a show that’s risky, daring and rewarding for its fans.

RESULTS:

• Users to E4.com/Hollyoaks tripled
• Page views tripled
• Video views doubled
• Broke record for most comments on a feature
• Facebook users doubled
• Page likes increased 400%
• Interactions increased 700%
• Twitter followers tripled
• Global Twitter trending
• Press coverage for #Wretch32Invasion in The Sun, NME, MNS, Yahoo, Holy Moly, Pop Dash, Digital Spy and more.