• by Adrienne Mand Lewin , December 31, 2007

DEEP FOCUS

Diving Into Networks

When HBO hired Deep Focus to promote its new series Flight of the Conchords, the agency convinced the network to do something it had never done before: Premiere original content elsewhere.

Deep Focus offered an exclusive window of distribution for the pilot episode of the series on MySpace.

"We used the power of both exclusivity and ubiquity to get this Flight of the Conchords content everywhere," says Deep Focus founder and CEO Ian Schafer, adding, "You could act as a theater for that content and you could act as an ambassador, saying, 'Don't trust me, see for yourself.'" The effort was backed by an OMMA award-winning rich media campaign, and the pilot was sampled online more than a million times.

Schafer said Deep Focus's strategy struck a chord with fans of the series. "The volume of chatter around this series and around those guys has been incredibly significant. We just made it possible for you to be able to share it with others."

For The Simpsons Movie, the agency created a MySpace profile as a way to aggregate all of the different promotions surrounding the 20th Century Fox movie. Everything from Burger King tie-ins to the Kwik-E-Marting of 7-Elevens nationwide was housed, promoted and syndicated through a MySpace page.

Users could access games, IM icons, animated GIFs, profile skins, mobile wallpapers, photos and the ability to Simpsonize themselves by creating a Simpsons avatar. The effort worked. "Before you knew it, up to 50 percent of your network on one of these social networking profiles switched to Simpsons characters," Schafer says. Even Tom got in on the action.

He adds that managing social media will be essential as consumers connect with brands online, for better or worse. "You have to have a social media strategy. If you don't, social media is going to have you."