Campaign

For the launch of its highly- anticipated series, The Magicians, Syfy partnered with Mirrored Media to launch a buzz worthy promotional campaign. Syfy needed to create a promotional campaign that would cut through the entertainment clutter and reach the show’s target audience – Millennials.

To reach millennials, the campaign hit on key millennial passion points like music, social experiences, and events and partnered with Warner Bros. Records and Fullscreen to embark on a five market college tour to promote The Magicians. Each tour stop was hosted by a different popular social media personality and featured an advance screening of the first episode, a live acoustic performance by millennial musician Bebe Rexha, cast appearances, branded concessions and shareable social activations.

The tour kicked off on Monday, January 11th 2016 and included the following stops: 

- Monday, 1/11 – Los Angeles, CA (Bovard Auditorium at USC) – hosted by @BrittaniTaylor

- Thursday, 1/14 – Austin, TX (Paramount Theatre) – hosted by @Blacknerd

- Tuesday, 1/19 – Miami, FL (Bill Cosford Cinema at University of Miami) – hosted by @DannyJPadilla

- Wednesday, 1/20 – Tucson, Arizona (Gallagher Theater at University of Arizona) – hosted by @DavidSoComedy

- Friday, 1/22 – New Orleans, LA (The Civic Theatre) – hosted by @JacksFilms

Bebe Rexha

Mirrored Media partnered with millennial musician, Bebe Rexha to reach true music fans and generate buzz surrounding The Magicians. Bebe is a songwriter and singer who penned what would become Eminem’s global hit song “The Monster” and currently her duet with G-Easy, “Me, Myself & I” is #1 on Billboard hip hop. The partnership married the two brands together by debuting Bebe’s new, never before heard single “No Broken Hearts” in a Magicians trailer. The trailer ran on-air, on Syfy.com and was posted on Syfy social handles garnering over 750K views on YouTube alone.

Influencers

Syfy got social with millennials by tapping into social media personalities and their extensive social following.  Five different influencers (@BrittaniTaylor, @Blacknerd, @DannyJPadilla@DavidSoComedy and @JacksFilms) shared custom created content across all of their social platforms to promote the tour and The Magicians.  Each influencer hosted a different stop along the tour route, introducing The Magicians episode, Bebe and getting the audience excited for the premiere.

Marketing and Social Amplification

In addition to Bebe Rexha and the social media influencers promoting the tour, Syfy teamed up with NBC affiliate networks, local press and promoters in each market as well as college groups to drive attendees to each tour stop.  Efforts included:

- Emails sent to college students at campuses in the 5 markets promoting the tour

- Worked with local college groups (fraternities, college radio, newspapers, college dorms) and Harry Potter/Fantasy groups to drive attendance

- Brand Ambassadors promoted the tour on campus – handing out fliers and encouraging students to attend.

- Worked with local NBC owned and operated channels as well sister business units to promote the tour on social platforms targeting the 5 markets (included Bravo, E!, Austin Telemundo, Miami “Six in the Mix” and local Los Angeles NBC).

- Geo-targeted paid search

- Geo-targeted paid social on Syfy/The Magicians social handles

- Promotion on Syfy.com and custom newsletter sent out to Syfy.com subscribers

- The Magicians paid media partners promoted the tour via geo-targeted posts on their social platforms (Wikia, Gawker, Io9, IMDB, TheOnion/AV Club)

Results

- The Magicians Premiere Night garnered the largest % of P18-34 than any premiere on Syfy in 3 years, with 55% of them being new Syfy viewers

- The Magicians Premiere Night brought in a higher % of P18-34 than the average of all Syfy originals since 2008, with 55% of them being new Syfy viewers

- P18-34 continued to climb the second week

- Fans joined in on the conversation with #TheMagicians generating over 84.4MM impressions over the course of the campaign (1/4/15 – 1/23/15) with chatter spiking by an average of 600% on the days of the tour events.

- 2,386 consumers attended the five events

- TheMagiciansSyfy Snapchat handle followers grew by 10 times through the duration of the tour and The Magicians Snaps made it into several local campus and city stories on Snapchat

- With the help of Bebe Rexha and the five social media influencers driving people to watch the pre-linear episode, The Magicians Episode 101 was sampled more than 6.7MM times across Syfy owned and operated platforms and partner sites between 1/8/16 – 1/25/16

About the Show

The Magicians, written by American author Lev Grossman, is a trilogy of fantasy novels about a group of students who attend a college of magic in New York City, which The New York Times described as "Harry Potter for adults".  The Magicians presented a unique opportunity to reach millennials and connect them to Syfy.   The success of the novels offered access to millennials and Syfy wanted to build on that, expand it, and transform it into new Syfy viewers by creating a disruptive experience that would complement their overall media campaign and generate buzz amongst consumers, press and social media influencers.