Is Discovery Channel the most successful event planner of all time? After all, they did manage to coordinate millions of ‘Shark-themed’ parties (including my own) across the U.S., and the party is still going. We are 4 days in to Discovery Channel’s Shark Week… and the madness is mad.
The 25th anniversary of Shark Week has far surpassed previous years in terms of online interactive components, providing viewers multiple ways to engage in Shark Week festivities. While there are multiple ways to engage – iPad apps, online quizzes, games, behind the scenes footage – the big question is, how many people are actually using these ‘extras’?
Hopes of high web traffic and surpassing their previous record of 30.8 million viewers in 2010 – the highest to date according to RealScreen.com – may be in the cards for Discovery Channel. As of Tuesday, the Twittersphere posted more than 1.1 million #SharkWeek tweets – a significant improvement over the 750,000 tweets for the entire week last year. Discovery Channel expects video streaming to double during Shark Week, compared to usual summer months.
The whole Shark Week ‘sha-bang’ falls back on Discovery Channel’s strategy, and what we at Sweeney preach when planning out a campaign.
- What do you want to accomplish?
- Who is your audience?
- How do you reach them (tactics)?
- In the case of Shark Week, what were the successes in the past? Areas for improvement?
- Don’t be scared to consider an integrated approach.
While there is much more to it than these five considerations, they can help get the conversation started.
So, now we’re curious. How has your Shark Week been so far? In your opinion, what is the most “jawesome” interactive component?
We’ll let you decide…but we love the shark cam.