Jon Stewart found success because he felt incredibly relevant and culturally important. We had to create for Trevor the same kind of nightly pop culture buzz TDS was used to getting in order to bring back fans and build back the ratings. And, we knew if we could get people to give Trevor a chance, they would like him; he wasn’t the same host they had met a year prior.

Our idea? Force an introduction.

If we could manufacture Daily Show buzz and make the show feel like it was on fire, our guess was that real buzz would follow. Essentially, our thought was if we could get a few “cool” kids in the media world to start writing about the show, some more kids would follow, and so on and so on. If it worked the way we predicted, soon nearly everyone would be talking about the show again.

To execute this new approach, we had to operationalize in a way no network had done before.

Each afternoon, the show team sent us the best clips from the midday taping. We took the clips, layered in social copy, and then passed the clips out to the top culture and news sites selected for paid content support. The clips flooded these partners’ social channels with “You don’t want to miss this” messaging and highlighted the craziest moments of that night’s show, creating a nightly groundswell around what would happen at 11 p.m. EST on Comedy Central.

The next morning, a new set of partners shared out the clips as content, highlighting a “You have to see what happened on TDS last night” message. These headline-heavy content pieces complemented any press that the show was getting naturally, culminating in the sense that everyone was talking about the rise of Trevor.

The moment we turned on our campaign, ratings started to dramatically climb. In fact, our first week was the highest-rated week ever for Trevor. Headlines started saying Trevor was, “One step closer to reviving the spirit of Jon Stewart” and proving “He’s Jon’s successor.”

The numbers speak for themselves:

• Show ratings had the highest day, week, month and quarter since Trevor took over

• Live + same day rating was the highest since the show’s launch

• Live +3-day average was up 21% YOY

• Weekly digital streams increased by 53%

• Interview with Tomi Lahren was the most-viewed clip in TDS history

And just as predicted, our paid partners continually posting about TDS evolved into everyone covering (and buzzing about) the show once again.

In the end, we not only brought people back to Trevor; we helped establish his position as a legitimate Jon Stewart replacement and a cultural heavy-hitter.