Set in the school’s magical library, the third and final season of Carmilla follows the gang we have come to love as they try to stop their possessed friend from opening the gates of hell on campus. Told in vlog format, the series’ narrative extends beyond the show itself through in-world character feeds and podcasts, allowing fans of the series, who’ve nicknamed themselves The Creampuffs, to fully immerse themselves into the show’s storyworld.

Through subtle yet impactful branding within the episodes, our aim was to move beyond over-done, intrusive product placement. Rather, we took the brand’s values and messaging, combined them with television-quality storytelling and created a “brand associated storyworld” that female millennials could delve into.

Season 3 took a “Netflix-style” approach with episodes being released in 3 multi-episode acts over 2-months – allowing fans to binge multiple episodes at a time. A sense of event programming was built into S3 with the use of YouNow – a live streaming social network – to host live pre-shows that included interactive games, Q&A and real-time commentary on the episodes by the cast of Carmilla.

The Creampuffs were encouraged to express their creativity and love for Carmilla through campaigns like #CarmillaPhotoFrenzy – a weekly online activity which featured a temporary link to exclusive GIFS and images. The activity generated thousands of pieces of user-generated content. To further increase awareness, S3 included stunt casting with Enrico Colantoni, best known for playing Keith Mars in Veronica Mars. Finally, collabs with prominent YouTubers AlexisGZall & AmandasChronicles were filmed to help spread the word about Carmilla, which received over 1 million views.

Seasons 1-3 of Carmilla have garnered over 58 million views, with more than half of these views coming from outside North America. The series’ social channels have earned 50 million organic impressions and 3 million organic engagements.

Season 3 of Carmilla was widely successful and has over 10 million views to-date. Trending multiple times during the season’s rollout, #CarmillaS3 was tweeted over 45k times generating over 55 million timeline deliveries on Twitter.

Following a panel at New York Comic Con this past October, it was announced that a Carmilla movie is slated to shoot in Spring 2017.

The success of Carmilla showcases the potential for brands to serve as storytellers, as well as, the need for more LGBTQ stories that better reflect reality, and bolsters the community rather than buries it. While there is still so much work to be done, Carmilla is a step in the right direction.