BITE Insight

Pick your team, choose a side and try to stay closely tuned to the battleground that is social media repartee, more generally known as banter. Comments fly back and forth, littering your feed with fiery statements, damning inditements and a clear indication of the personalities behind them.

It’s this banter-filled personality that We Are Social developed for the launch of the campaign Goodbye Spike, Hello Paramount. The campaign marked the re-brand of the Spike TV channel to Paramount Network.

Spike TV was an overtly masculine, ‘testosterone network’ with a growing audience, half of whom would be angry to see it cancelled while the other half happily welcomed change. The campaign was designed to send Spike off like a legend while simultaneously welcoming in Paramount.

We Are Social personified Spike and created a storyline which saw him confronting his sacking by Paramount. The campaign shared all Spike’s emotions as he experienced them across the network’s social channels. At the same time, it launched Paramount’s social media presence to respond with witty comebacks, GIFs, original videos and events.

By generating the social noise before even airing a single program, Paramount Network had a readily established fan-base which still retained many Spike fans sad to see it close.

Spike’s rebranding is aptly and smartly timed as overtly machismo channels feel remarkably outdated in 2018. Through #MeToo and other movements, we have seen seismic shifts across many industries, bringing us to the realisation that this stereotypical portrayal of men is no longer applicable.