SEARCH PARTY: SEASON ONE
Search Party is a satirical dark comedy TV series about five self-absorbed 20-somethings who trail a mystery to find a missing friend while trying to figure out life post-college—the next step in reaching adulthood.
TONE OF VOICE
Creating the social tone of voice for the show proved to be a bit of a challenge—The challenge being to not actually make fun of millennials, but being funny about self-deprecation and making light of their esoteric truths and realities. It was a delicate play between moments of honesty and humility wrapped in humor.
ART DIRECTION
As for art direction, we explored many different visual styles, colors, textures, graphics, animations, and typography. Because the show pays an homage to Nancy Drew, the key art was heavily derived from its covers, and many of our discussions were deciding how much of that do we apply when creating content.
There was also the element of where the show is taking place. When you picture New York, you visualize
a mixture of old and new. Towering shiny skyscrapers, exposed bricks of decaying buildings, fine art and street art, bustling sidewalks with millions of faces, seedy alleys with its own hidden stories, and newly-renovated, well-decorated hipster shops and restaurants that puts up a front that all is well and good. It’s as if there are two worlds that are melding into each other with no clear lines that divides one from the other, and we reflected on how it correlates to the show/our TOV where everything is just a complexity of realities, delusions, and fantasies.
#INSEARCHOF CAMPAIGN
TBS asked us to create a hashtag campaign to help create awareness of the show amongst their target audience. The goal was to use the hashtag to generate engagement, and for us to surprise and delight people with various gifts. These gifts ranged from something simple as Boxed Water, a Lyft ride, to rolls of toilet paper (YES—TOILET PAPER), to something amazing as a $15K scholarship.
The insight we ran with was that people between the ages of 18-35, like the characters on the show, all haven't quite made it yet. It's a millennial thing to fake it 'til they make it, and they're all in search of something greater—a better career, a sense of purpose and fulfillment, love and relationship, maturity, wisdom, self-control, experience—a laundry list of all those things that you expect a "real adult" to have. Be it as someone's search being profound or superficial, we wanted to shed light that it's a common experience that almost everyone has and that it's okay to not have their sh*t together yet.
To kickoff the campaign, we invited the cast and asked them a few questions on what they themselves or their characters are in search of.
PRE-PREMIERE
To adjust to the changing viewing habits of their audience, and to challenge streaming services like Netflix and Hulu, TBS planned to execute an unconventional play pattern for the launch of this new show—broadcasting two episodes per night for five consecutive nights, completing the entire season, and all episodes were available to watch anytime on On Demand. Targeting students returning home for the Thanksgiving break, we decided to make a really bold content to get their attention but simple enough to work with our extremely tight timeline.
POST-PREMIERE
Due to TBS' unique play pattern, we had to approach our content creation/posting cadence differently than any other TV show. Our recap posts were jokes than a typical ICYMI-like posts since anyone could have easily watched the entire season within four hours. And because the show had a dark undertone, we were asked to keep up the humor with all of our content. We played with the Nancy Drew-like themes giving each content a title.
IN-SHOW / REACTIONARY
Live CM would happen for about 2–3 hours each day for each coast—managers would tweet with GIFs prior, during, and after the two episodes. As mentioned before, humor is a huge part of this show, and even though the characters are going through some mild form of existential crises or genuine, modern-human difficulties, would were not allowed to end on a serious note. We often tip-toed around these mine fields to make sure everything we create comes across as light-hearted.
With reactionary content, we'd review all discussion topics and create something unique the next morning. With two episodes airing each evening, it was a matter of narrowing what people thought was funny or interesting and then finding ways to create a new joke on that.
CREDITS
Agency: Vayner Media
Creative Director: John McGill
Art Director: Terry Lee
Senior Copywriter: Kim Merritt