The season two premiere of Gossip Girl outperformed the 2007 season average by 44% in Adults 18-34 and 35% in total viewers – its best ratings ever with Adults 18-34, Women 18-34 and Women 18-49. It averaged 3.4MM viewers, 1MM viewers higher than last season's average, beating out ABC, CBS and NBC. According to Nielsen ratings, The CW was the #1 network among Women and all adults 18-34. The campaign garnered a record number of widget and application downloads, and thousands of hits and friends on CW community pages. We exceeded expectations with a total of 30,902 participants, 11884 total opt-ins and 26501 total IVR calls.

Reaching viewers in an unprecedented way via mobile, we took audience engagement a step further by offering text messages from THE Gossip Girl herself in real-time during the show’s pivotal moments. Once viewers opted in, they received texts that synched up with dialogue happening on-air. The texts provided show commentary and a truly unique viewing experience as fans received real gossip from the show’s eponymous character.

We peppered the mobile campaign with a variety of online efforts, including a “get gossip” widget aligning with People Magazine’s RSS Feed and promoted on such key websites as The CW, MySpace and Facebook; Web banners driving traffic to the mobile application on The CW website’s mobile platform; and promotion on the Gossip Girl page of CWTV.com.And for the first time ever, we utilized Doubleclick’s Dart for Advertisers to provide third-party visibility into the performance of the mobile web campaign.

To the fans (women 18-34) of The CW Network’s popular Gossip Girl, it’s not just a show, it’s a lifestyle. Characters’ clothes become fashion must-haves and hip texting lingo like “OMG!” is incorporated into everyday vernacular. We needed to continue the buzz for the show’s second season among the hard-to-impress Young Adults – pushing the envelope to achieve more cultural permeation and ratings success.Our goals were to drive viewership by 20% over 2007, raise awareness from last season's average of 2.3 million viewers and allow viewers to interact with the endemic qualities of Gossip Girl in a new and enticing way.

We capitalized on the loyal following to the trendsetting Gossip Girl, bringing fans closer than they ever dreamt possible to the show’s characters. There was only one communication method sure to generate instant response and buzz: cellphones. Our media-first mobile idea engaged the audience and drove live-interaction during the show.