E! Entertainment
Hitting the Tabloid Headlines
Capabilities:
A man clambers out of a Buckingham Palace window during the Changing of the Guard, dangling on to a makeshift climbing rope crafted from a bed sheet. If this weren’t bizarre enough, he’s naked. It seems a royal scandal is unfolding. After a few heart-stopping seconds, the man plummets from his improvised escape line. Yet the emergency services report not to have received any calls to treat a naked man at the royal abode. The tabloids are baffled.
This is the story of how we got the world talking about a fictional royal family by blurring the lines between reality and fiction.
1.5M
Views in the first 24 hours.
5.3M
Combined audience viewers.
#1
Socially talked about launch in E!’s history.
E! — an American cable channel — was known for unscripted reality TV. In March 2015, they were about to launch their first scripted series, The Royals, a show centred around a fictional family.
E! wanted to release their new show with an almighty bang, going beyond their usual promos to reach a tech-savvy, pop culture-hungry audience.
Instead of traditional marketing avenues, we went native on Tinder, Twitter and YouTube.
From scandalous stories to showbiz news, E!’s audience cares about celebrity gossip. Anything relating to the royal family is particularly juicy. To reach this audience and get them talking about the new show, we went to the channels they use most and blurred the lines between reality and fiction. We created additional content for each of our three main characters: the Queen, the Prince and the Princess.
First up, the queen. The Queen’s Speech is usually a gracious address to the nation, peppered with solemn remarks. We made our own — X-rated — version. “My husband is a stranger to me and my children are a shitshow,” says our monarch in a parody version of the tradition.
We put our Prince Liam where young girls might hope to find him; on Tinder where he slid into 300k girls' DMs.
But let’s return to our naked suitor clinging on to bed linen for dear life. If ever there were a video we wish had been real, it's this one. Alas, it was one of ours. In under 24 hours, it had become an internet sensation and global news story.