Channel THIRTEEN, New York’s local Public Broadcasting Station relies on donations from viewers to stay on the air – we were challenged to recruit new donors. Our observation: TV has been overrun by crappy reality TV. If shows like Duck Dynasty and Honey Boo Boo keep attracting all the attention, there won’t be any quality programming left. So to demonstrate how absurd the TV landscape has become, we launched #TVGONEWRONG – an integrated marketing campaign for several fake reality shows. They were just as believable and ridiculous as real reality TV shows, except they all ended with, “the fact you thought this was a real show, says a lot about the state of TV,“ and asked people to support THIRTEEN and quality programming.

We promoted our fake reality shows the same way a real network would. We began our launch by creating posters that ran in subway stations all across New York. The shows included Married To A Mime, Knitting Wars, Bayou Eskimos, The Dillionaire, and Bad Bad Bag Boys. We also sent out custom press packets to draw attention to the launch.

Soon after, we released trailers for additional fake reality shows, including Clam Kings, Long Island Landscapers, and Meet The Tanners. We ran these trailers on TV and online.

We also created Twitter accounts for characters from our fake shows, who tweeted to fans and the press throughout the campaign.

We followed up by leaking bonus footage online, created content for Tumblr, created websites for the fake shows. Our fake shows even informed the regular fundraising emails sent out by Thirteen.

The campaign created enormous buzz.

We reached #1 on Reddit, making the front page twice. We had articles written in major publications and blogs, including The New York Times, New York Magazine, The Hollywood Reporter, E!, Forbes, Huffington Post, Business Insider, International Business Times, Fast Company, Buzzfeed, NBC News, ABC News, Gawker, The AV club, and many more.

Television shows aired segments about our campaign, including CNN, The Today show, several local news networks, Showbiz Tonight, and more.

With only $55k in paid media, earned media helped drive over 182 million impressions. New memberships were up 60% compared to the same time last year, with 50,000 + new members added.