Social and Influencer > Social

MR. ROBOT DEBT DELETION

ISL, Washington D.C. / NBC / 2016

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Overview

Credits

OVERVIEW

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To bring our idea to life, we built a custom set inspired by the hacker lair from the show providing our fsociety members a place to interact with Twitch viewers during the livestream. The set had a realistic and cinematic grittiness, which helped transport people into the distinct world created in the series.

We started the campaign interrupting Twitch’s livestream at E3 with mysterious messages from fsociety, making it look as if the feed was hacked.

Through carefully choreographed vignettes and an artistically designed set, viewers reaped the benefits of our fsociety's digital corporate takedown as we deleted over $100,000 of the people's debt in real time.

Execution

When E3 Coverage ended, Twitch hosted the first 15 minutes of the Mr. Robot livestream, immediately attracting thousands of viewers. As our hackers migrated over to the Mr. Robot page, Twitch's viewers came with us, garnering over 19,000 concurrent streams.

During the 17-hour livestream, we let the audience dictate the actions of our fsociety members — communicating in real-time with the hackers via chat, Twitter, and Facebook. This real-time engagement proved to viewers that the stream was truly live and was by far the most effective way of engaging with our audience.

Every 30 minutes the hackers would reveal a new code, giving viewers a chance to reclaim a portion of the $100k. Ultimately 1200 winners were announced live and paid out immediately via PayPal.

Outcome

The campaign ultimately garnered 1,562,280 total views, 309,651 email entries, 63,363 twitter entries,17,367 max concurrents, and 8,549,422 million minutes of video watched. This is the first time a TV network, more specifically a scripted drama — has built a custom digital, interactive experience for the Twitch platform. It is also by far the largest cash giveaway that has been done using Twitch. From the concept to the set to the reaction online, this was a campaign teeming with firsts and the buzz created helped Mr. Robot secure a season 2 renewal before the show even premiered on USA Network.

Mr. Robot is the winner of two Golden Globe Awards, three Critics' Choice Television Awards, one Gotham Independent Film Award and the Audience Choice Award at SXSW.

Strategy

To build awareness for the show with a young audience and immerse them in the themes of the series, we wanted to do something radical and to make a difference; we would delete $100,000 dollars of debt live, in real-time.

The Debt Deletion campaign was a custom, interactive experience built for Twitch — a live streaming platform with 35 million monthly users. Twitch's tech-savvy audience was the perfect demographic for Mr. Robot and the platform's innate social nature was idea for leveraging reach and accessibility.

We started the campaign by hacking into Twitch's livestream at the E3 gaming convention — the platform's most watched feed every year — with custom messages from fsociety, the fictitious hacker group from the series.

Synopsis

Mr. Robot, a dark and complex new drama series on USA Network, follows the story of a young programmer who works at a cyber-security firm by day and is a vigilante hacker by night. He is recruited by an underground hacker group to help bring down the world financial system, erasing over 70% of the world's debt.

To promote the premiere of the show, we created a massive, first of its kind campaign. Our goal was to create mass awareness with a young, gaming audience and immerse them in the themes of the series. We wanted to do something radical and to make a difference; we would delete over $100,000 of debt, live on Twitch.

Twitch is a live streaming platform with 35 million monthly users who login to watch people play video games. Twitch's tech-savvy audience was the perfect demographic for Mr. Robot.

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