Promoting television shows be it reality or drama or even comedy for that matter, is really serious business. Especially in a cluttered television space that is vying for audiences glued to their favourite programs. Viacom 18 owned Comedy Central India, the Indian version of Comedy Central devoted to catering to our constant need to laugh, has launched a month long Facebook promotion for the second season of its legal comedy drama series ‘Suits’.
The 24 hour English comedy channel has challenged its fans to test their SQ through a Facebook quiz, which will have 50 winners gratified with exclusive Suits merchandise. The first 30 chosen through a random lucky draw win T-shirts and the next 20 win Comedy Central merchandise.
The Suits challenge
The Suits challenge is a quiz for the die-hard fans of Suits to find out if they have what it takes to be a real Suitor. Hosted on a Facebook app called the ‘Suits Challenge’, there are six levels to the quiz and you cannot proceed to the next level unless you’ve given the right answer. You can take the quiz without ‘liking’ the page too!
The first level also called ‘Level Mike’ has four options to choose from. This should be easy if you know the characters he gave the LSAT for. But, even if you don’t know and end up selecting the wrong answer, you can try again and that is the best part of this quiz. They want to educate you on Suits, apart from challenging you.
Level 2 is Level Donna, where you need to complete a dialogue by Donna. A YouTube link provides the clue. With each correct answer, you move to the next level and the more difficult one, but then there are ample clues located on the social media channels of Comedy Central. Level 3 clue can be located on the Pinterest page and so on. I played till level 3; the lure of t-shirts and other merchandise didn’t quite get into me.
Apart from the quiz promotions on the Facebook wall for its 1.4 million strong Facebook community, Suits S2 is also being promoted on Twitter with the hashtag #SuitsS2onCC. With more than 17K followers on Twitter, the handle has been connecting and promoting the show by tweeting dialogues between the central characters.
How suitable is it?
The Suits Challenge comes across as an attempt to catch everyone’s attention and not just the show’s fans. Hiding clues on the brand’s YouTube channel, Pinterest board, etc. is a good way to promote the other social media networks of the television channel. But, giving fans easy clues and multiple chances to participate takes away the zeal from the challenge, making it just another promotional campaign asking fans to learn more about an upcoming show. However, the incentives of exclusive merchandise are quite appropriate for this easy challenge. Imagine working real hard for a T-shirt!
Perhaps, Comedy Central wanted it this way and just needs Suits season 2 to catch up with its viewers with time. The channel could have done this on Twitter instead and gained more visibility.
Television shows of late have been recreating the experience associated with a new show. Recently, for ‘The Kitchen Musical‘, NDTV Good Times had created a Facebook app where fans could create their own music tracks complete with sounds from the kitchen. Two most voted entries got a holiday package to Thailand. The Kitchen Musical is a show that revolves around drama, food and music.
When Zee Cafe wanted to launch the 5th and 6th season of Gossip Girl, it created a Facebook app that spread gossip about your friends. AXN India had launched an exclusive Hannibal premiere for its fans, for its new thriller show featuring the fictional psychiatrist Dr. Hannibal Lecter. Interestingly, fans at the premiere were offered psychoanalytic tests by a clinical psychologist.
Easy and inclusive of all fans is how I see The Suits Challenge. How do you see it?
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