Learning To Create Immersive Experiences For Super Fans ‘The Walking Dead’ Way

Super fans can be super mar­keters, but they have exact­ing stan­dards. Pas­sion­ate fans want brand­ed expe­ri­ences that are rel­e­vant, authen­tic, and empow­er­ing.

Lisa Lacy By Lisa Lacy. Join the discussion » 0 comments

Super fans are eager to par­tic­i­pate in brand­ed expe­ri­ences, but they have to be rel­e­vant, authen­tic, and empow­er­ing. If the brand fails at any point, super fans will glad­ly air their griev­ances and it’s up to brands to learn by being savvy lis­ten­ers, digest­ing this crit­i­cism, and adjust­ing the expe­ri­ences accord­ing­ly.


With 15.7 mil­lion view­ers of its Sea­son 4 finale in March, as well as 30.4 mil­lion Face­book fans and 2.7 mil­lion Twit­ter fol­low­ers, AMC’s “The Walk­ing Dead” is one of the most pop­u­lar shows on tele­vi­sion – and, as a result, it has a pre­dictably pas­sion­ate fan base.

These are fans eager for relat­ed con­tent, but they have exact­ing stan­dards. And that means the brand and its part­ners have both huge oppor­tu­ni­ty and respon­si­bil­i­ty.

Accord­ing to Greg Braun, exec­u­tive cre­ative direc­tor of adver­tis­ing agency Inno­cean, super fans are actu­al­ly super mar­keters.

It’s some­one that is inher­ent­ly not sat­is­fied with being a wit­ness, but wants to par­tic­i­pate,” Braun said dur­ing a recent Adver­tis­ing Week pan­el. “We as mar­keters have to give them oppor­tu­ni­ties. We can’t just inter­rupt – it has to be relevant…and the last thing is authen­tic­i­ty. If we’re not authen­tic to that prop­er­ty, they’ll tear a brand apart.”

To that end, Braun worked with Hyundai to cre­ate the Walk­ing Dead Chop Shop, an effort that gives “Walk­ing Dead” fans the oppor­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate their own zom­bie sur­vival machine through an app and web­site. Fans start by choos­ing a Hyundai mod­el – such as those fea­tured in the show – and add armor, sur­vival acces­sories, and designs from a range of options, includ­ing near­ly 300 dif­fer­ent car parts, accord­ing to a press release when the effort was announced in August 2013. Fans are then able to share their cre­ations, get sur­vival scores and test the vehi­cles in sce­nar­ios inspired by the orig­i­nal “Walk­ing Dead” com­ic books.

Accord­ing to Braun, the key to build­ing the cam­paign was look­ing for ways to empow­er fans, or what he calls “savvy lis­ten­ing,” not­ing, “It’s not always what you want to hear.”

Case in point: The Chop Shop, which start­ed out as what Braun called a prod­uct place­ment and expand­ed to include a 1:1 scale zom­bie sur­vival machine for Com­ic Con, was loved by gen­er­al “Walk­ing Dead” fans, but not hard­core fans.

They were very spe­cif­ic – ‘There’s not enough ground clear­ance to get over skulls,’” Braun said. “Or they said, ‘The low pro­file tires are going to slip on the guts.’ We lis­tened and regrouped and said, ‘If you can do bet­ter, let’s see it,’ and we gave them the tools to do that.”

Since then, the Chop Shop has since yield­ed 296,000 zom­bie sur­vival machines.

But, Braun said, the brand and its agency part­ners con­tin­ued to lis­ten. Hyundai ini­tial­ly pro­vid­ed fea­tures like flame throw­ers, machine guns, and saw blades, but when those most pas­sion­ate fans asked about smoke screens, the brand deliv­ered, empow­er­ing those con­sumers with more crowd­sourced parts.

It’s about respect­ing the audi­ence and lis­ten­ing,” Braun said. “The lis­ten­ing nev­er stopped.”

Hyundai even sold a few of the machines as a result – although not, Braun not­ed, mod­els with machine guns.

We knew we had to be authen­tic,” Braun says. “We part­nered with [‘Walk­ing Dead’ cre­ator] Robert Kirk­man and his com­pa­ny, which is always very dili­gent about being authen­tic to this prop­er­ty.”


Are you lis­ten­ing to your super fans? What have you learned from your audi­ence? Share your insights with us in the com­ments.

Lisa Lacy

Written by Lisa Lacy

Lisa is a senior features writer for Inked. She also previously covered digital marketing for Incisive Media. Her background includes editorial positions at Dow Jones, the Financial Times, the Huffington Post, AOL, Amazon, Hearst, Martha Stewart Living and the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.

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