Amazon
Prime Video
Gen V
AGENCY // Movement Strategy
ROLE // Senior Art Director
YEAR // Fall 2023
Zero to Hero, College-Edition
Launching a spinoff is always an exciting opportunity, but if you fail to win over the original fanbase, you’ll get expelled.
Our team assumed the challenge of winning over fans of Gen V’s predecessor, The Boys, and went on to take the show’s brand new social handles from nothing to a must-visit location between weekly episode drops.
We had an all-new cast, an all new University, and we were ready to dig deeper into the lore of the The Boys universe.
ACCOUNT TEAM // Elyse Runkle, Aimee Keenan
STRATEGY TEAM // Ryan Joseph, Margie Guy, Anna Norfield
CREATIVE TEAM // Matt Little, Rajiv Smith-Mahabir, Richie LaRuffa
Campaign Context
The Client
After the success of our The Boys season 3 campaign, Prime Video chose our agency as their social partner for Gen V.
The client was looking for world-building, hidden clues, and meticulous adherence to show lore.
This was my first time on working with the client, and, having heard great things, had excited butterflies and big ambitions.
The Audience
Gen V was positioned for a slightly younger audience than The Boys, but would that become a reality as we built our social audience?
We knew for certain that whoever followed or subscribed would bring the same level of scrutiny and knowledge that fans of The Boys brought to that social universe.
The Initial Challenge
Zero. Zero was the initial Gen V challenge.
We started our Instagram and Twitter channels with zero followers and had to endure the “what if” every marketer has to experience as the wheels slowly started to turn and our growth began to accelerate.
Campaign Creative
Our Real Challenge
The success of The Boys ballooned during its third season, so Amazon gave Gen V an instant promotion: Tier 1 status. That means all content would go to all markets in all socials specs.
This was a big step up from simple domestic delivery, and happened before we took on the same challenge for the fourth season of The Boys, so we had to execute our scaling process with a new client flawlessly.
Our Approach
Close collaboration on creative storytelling was key in our approach. Our clients were excellent copywriters themselves, and questioned and pushed us to create the sharpest in-world angles we could.
Once the direction was locked down, scripts were shot, and V01’s were green-lit, I optimized motion graphics packages to be easily optimized for 9x16, 16x9, 1x1, and 4x5 specs.
Our Output
We created over 30 pieces of original content for Gen V, and each piece ran across multiple channels in multiple countries. We partnered with local teams for any translation resolutions needed, and ultimately delivered above our scope as weekly reactive opportunities gave us fodder for ever-engaging content.
Our new fans loved it.
Social Mix
We leaned in hard to the “Super Quad” theme. Every beloved, if mundane, interaction we had with our college campuses was dissected and reassembled through the lens of, “What if a bunch of horny college students had super powers?”
We set out to figure this out.
Campaign Results
487K
New Followers
On Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Twitter in 90 Days
Wins
We successfully turned a substantial number of “maybe-I’ll-watch-later” followers into “I-just-binged” followers, according to comments we got down the stretch. In particular, it was the new characters that fans latched onto that drove conversation and calls for a second season.
We also saw strong results from our shortform vertical video content on Reels and TikTok, driven primarily by new series stars London Thor and Derek Luh.
112M
Total Impressions
Across Platforms in 90 Days
Learnings
We fell short of our follower count goal of 500k total new followers, despite beating our performance goals. Our fans were very engaged, but I think a few extra influencer plays could have boosted follower growth to that figure.
78M
Video Videos
On Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube in 90 Days
Final Takeaway
Building the foundational fanbase for a spinoff requires approaching to-be fans where they are. We found success by appealing to subgenre (college shows) fans, main series diehards, Prime Video ecosystem-goers, and social users looking for the right new show to dive into.
The coalition of fans we pulled together served as a buzzy, high-potential group of advocates who will only intensify as season two launches.