QVC America's largest TV retailer, needed to attract a younger audience. So they created a partnership with family movie: Muppets Most Wanted. Other brands ran Super Bowl or Oscars ads with the Muppets. QVC didn't have millions of dollars to spend on one campaign, so they did something different.

Instead of making a traditional commercial, QVC worked with Disney to infuse a made-up storyline into popular culture: a forty-year feud between Joan Rivers and Miss Piggy that no one knew about – until now.

The story would travel throughout media and build anticipation for a Muppets takeover day on QVC where Joan and Piggy would appear together, along with the Muppets causing their trademark mayhem.

To make the fictional feud real, we created a series of content pieces to fuel press coverage. For each piece we gave specific press outlets exclusive premieres, which then helped develop the story as it spread organically through news and gossip blogs and broadcast media—all pop culture spheres that our target audience frequented.

The content also created talking points for the Muppets as they began the PR rounds to promote the film. During Miss Piggy’s public appearances, press could not resist bringing up the feud between her and Joan Rivers and their upcoming reunion on QVC.

In addition to securing additional press appearances for Joan Rivers, we also worked with social media teams at Disney as well as Joan Rivers to coordinate social media and make a cohesive storyline across all of the talent-owned media.

The story started on February 28 when Miss Piggy announced ‘exclusively’ to US Weekly she’d be launching a ‘lifestyle brand’ on QVC March 16 as part of the Muppets takeover day.

That night, at QVC’s annual red carpet party, a Getty photographer was tipped to capture Joan Rivers running out covered in cake, in a story that was exclusive to entertainment news site JustJared.

After the mystery spread, footage leaked online revealing what really happened: Miss Piggy pushed Joan Rivers into a cake, and JustJared and E! were given first exclusives.

Several days later, E! News exclusively released a three-minute exposé that revealed the full story of the decades-long rivalry.

In week two, Good Morning America premiered Miss Piggy’s commercial for her new lifestyle brand ‘MOI,’ which lived on QVC.com and YouTube afterward.

These content pieces built anticipation for the Muppets’ appearance on QVC on March 16. At the day’s climax, Miss Piggy and Joan Rivers reconciled live on air.

The feud was picked up my almost every major entertainment press outlet, resulting in over 350 press mentions and 1 billion overall impressions. QVC experienced significantly increased sales for the Muppets take over day, as well as new customer acquisitions. The takeover day was their most social day of all time, and their overall social media following increased by 15.3% over the two weeks. A live stream of the channel on YouTube brought in 50K viewers watching an average of 6 minutes. In a post-campaign survey, 29% of moms (both customers and non-customers) indicated perceptions of QVC had changed to positive.