Submitted by New MoonAgency IPI Score 14/100

The Circle

Influencer Marketing

New Moon worked with a collective of online personalities to build social commentary around Channel 4's The Circle, generating 1.93 million impression and views across Twitter, Instagram and Stories.

1.93Mimpressions and views

Case in 60 seconds

Channel 4 needed online social commentary to build around The Circle, and the page frames the difficulty as one of driving that conversation from a television show rather than from the platforms where the talking happens.

The campaign appears to turn on the observation that conversation about a show is carried by people the audience already follows, because commentary from a familiar voice reads as participation in the culture of social media rather than as promotion placed next to it.

Rather than advertising the show, New Moon put a collective of popular online personalities into the conversation as commentators, so the talk about the programme was generated and then sustained by the cast itself.

New Moon worked with a collective of popular online personalities who generated and continued conversations about the show on social media, posting real-time commentary that included live reactions and reviews of each episode across Twitter, Instagram and Stories.

New Moon reports that the partners created authentic content and increased audience awareness and engagement, and that across Twitter, Instagram and Stories the campaign generated 1.93 million impression and views.

Strategy Breakdown

The primary strategy-learning section — interpretation, not a press-release summary.

A television show is broadcast on a schedule while the commentary that gives it cultural weight happens on social media, and New Moon's answer was to place the cast inside that commentary rather than to push the broadcast into it.
Based on the available evidence, the challenge the page sets is a broadcaster's rather than a product advertiser's: driving social commentary online from a TV show, where the measure of success is talk about the programme rather than a purchase.
Based on the available evidence, Channel 4 supplied the episodes that the commentary reacted to, while the cast of online personalities carried the conversation, so the brand's role reads as the occasion for the talk rather than its author.
Live reaction and review is an established behaviour around reality formats, and the campaign appears to work by having recognised personalities perform that behaviour rather than by asking the audience to start it.

Creative & Execution System

Assets & channels

  • Instagram
  • Instagram Stories
  • Twitter
  • Stories
  • live reactions
  • reviews

Partners

  • New Moon (lead_agency)

Creator role

  • a collective of popular online personalities

Results & Evidence

MetricValueResult type
impressions and viewsAcross Twitter, Instagram and Stories, we generated 1.93 million impression and views.video_views

Why New Moon's strategy worked

  1. 1

    Real-time reaction and review content ties creator output to a broadcast schedule, which gives a show a reason to be discussed at the hour it airs rather than only in the days after an episode.

  2. 2

    Casting a collective rather than a single partner spreads commentary across several audiences at once, which suits a format whose value to a broadcaster is the volume and continuity of talk about it.

  3. 3

    Reporting impressions and views as one combined number across three surfaces makes reach look larger while removing the ability to compare platforms, so a campaign measured this way cannot show which surface carried the conversation.

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