The Fades

THE MISSION:
The Fades was a new show establishing itself on BBC Three in the sci-fi genre. Telegraph Hill were hired to plan the online content and create a conversation around the show, turning a cautious audience into hardcore fans.

THE WORK:
We took all existing content, including behind the scenes video, interviews, storyboards and pictures, and created a roll-out schedule of content across the series. A conventional approach would be to look at this practically, e.g. ‘a look at the special effects in ep 2′ or ‘meet the guest star in ep 4′. We didn’t want to go down that path, instead paying close attention to the story and planning our content around that.

We looked at key relationships, putting ourselves in the mind of the audience. We designed VTs around the Mac and Paul bromance that was at the heart of the show, and the ‘first love’ story between Paul and Jay. Not only were these features reflective of the storylines in those particular episodes, they also had consequences.

We encouraged fans to buy into Paul & Jay’s romance with a music video highlighting how great they were together, encouraging fans to discuss why they loved them as a couple. This affection was built up over several weeks meant seeing her killed in the show in ep6 was an even more powerful experience.

THE SCI-FI CHALLENGE:
Sci-fi audiences are notoriously knowledgeable and loyal to their brands. We had to work hard to establish a loyal audience from scratch for this show. We had to get that audience to understand that The Fades was made by people with a high sci-fi pedigree. We had to get them taking The Fades seriously as the next big thing in sci-fi.

Our VT and picture content re-enforced the show’s pedigree, with heavy use of storyboards, concept art and interviews highlighting the amount of thought and artistic work that had gone into the show.

We built a new audience by making our tone really attractive to fans, making our voice on Twitter and Facebook something they’d really want to get involved with. We took up a slightly pre-apocolyptic stance, mixed with a healthy dose of dark humour. Our Twitter bio screamed ‘COME WITH US IF YOU WANT TO LIVE!’

Finally, we clipped select chunks out of the episodes and released them online well in advance of the show coming to air. These clips showed the effects of the fades, but not what a fade was or how it had done its work. We built the community on the back of fans saying ‘I don’t know what the hell this is about but I will definitely be watching…’

This pre-series buzz carried through into a community that had great loyalty to the show, starting a petition for its immediate return as soon as the last episode aired.

RESULTS:
Three topics trending on Twitter in first episode.
Highest multichannel audience at launch.
Massive increase on slot average.
25,000+ Facebook fans.
4,000+ Twitter followers.
Fans launched Facebook and Twitter campaigns to bring the series back.