Friday, June 29, 2012

How To Promote A Hit TV Series

Or any TV series well to be honest. Yes, you can bung a few clips together for a 30-90 second promo and give the show a good day, timeslot and lead in show and hope for the best.


Then there's also the use of a concept trailer, which means getting the cast together to film a promo that hints at the themes of the upcoming season/series of a show (with a bit of misdirection here and there too). Personally, I've noticed many shows do concept trailers, if not for every season then definitely for a good amount of their seasons. Shows like Doctor Who, True Blood, Dexter, Desperate Housewives, Skins are amongst the plethora of shows that have often used concept trailers as well as regular trailers to promote their shows and often, it's a lot more creative and interesting a marketing tool.


In some ways, it's almost like a live moving version of the promotional pictures that virtually every show on the planet are required to do and if you mosey through YouTube, there are some rather delightful ones to try and find for whatever show takes your fancy. Even the majority of the soaps in the UK have done them for big storylines (Hollyoaks in particular seems to have a new one every 3-4 months). Often they are the better method of promoting a series.

2 comments:

E. said...

Last summer American Horror Story used the rubber man to scare the hell out of people in thei own houses. I thought it was a genius way to promote the series, as well as what they did with the mini videos they called "clues".

shawnlunn2002 said...

They did too. Those were pretty effective in terms of getting interest in the series as well.