To promote the new season of Billions, Showtime opened a Venmo account and paid out money to fans who participated in a viral Twitter marketing campaign.
Objective:
After a 504-day hiatus, the hotly anticipated Season five, Part two of Billions was returning to Showtime. Marketing, advertising and PR plans were already underway. Could anything more be added to drive conversations on premiere night?
A few weeks before the debut, a new social team was challenged to come up with a premiere day idea to add even more momentum to the Billions conversation. The goals: reward loyal viewers (who had been waiting one and a half years), and get Billions trending on premiere night in order to drive tune-in.
Target Audience:
This idea had to be able to trend quickly, gain rapid engagement, and be conceived for mobile, since the concept and responses relied on immediate cross-app engagement.
Creative Strategy:
The characters in Billions know about swagger, bold moves, and the power of money. The brand wanted to drive conversation, get trending, and reinforce the urgency of premiere night, by proving that it pays to be friends with billionaires. The brand would pay out $5,000 to fans via Venmo.
Context:
The brand had less than three weeks until implementation on premiere day.
Overall Campaign Execution:
A few days before the premiere, the brand created a regular user Venmo account for Showtime, with the fan-recognizable-name Dollar-Bill-Billions, and loaded it with $5,000. Showtime created a single tweet for Billions fans to be posted by @SHO_Billions.
At 9 am on premiere day, Showtime's Billions pinned this tweet, telling folks to hit up Dollar Bill on Venmo. And then avarice took over. Throughout the day, the brand manually confirmed 1,300 individual new friend requests. Many of these new friends played along with ambitious requests of their own — like asking Showtime for $10 million.
One pinned tweet is all it took to start the frenzy, house all #Billions mentions in one place, and drive people to another platform to take action.
When the premiere episode began, Showtime doled out the cash by paying a random selection of 50 Venmo friends $100 each. Then the wildfire spread. Recipients took to Twitter sharing screenshots of their payout, their friends liked and commented on the public Venmo feed updates, and Billions actor Kelly AuCoin, who plays Dollar Bill, engaged with fans directly for fun.
Showtime gained attention and pop culture renown with hits like Shameless, Dexter, and Billions. It has carved a unique space in the entertainment ecosystem for fans of quality television centered on edgy characters, compelling dramas and biting comedies. However, in the era of peak TV (559 drama series aired in 2021), social media is critical to drive awareness, buzz and word of mouth.
In the span of 12 hours, the surprise payout stunt garnered 7,400 total owned engagements and 14,000 total mentions (an 18.8 percent increase from season five part one), with zero paid media support. Active community management propelled the conversation on premiere day: over 1,300 friend requests, 70 Venmo-specific mentions, and an approximately 6 percent engagement rate on Venmo, more than double the engagement rate Billions typically sees on other social platforms.
Overall, the campaign generated 1 million total impressions and helped support a wildly successful premiere night for the return of season five of Billions, with #Billions trending on Twitter within the first seven minutes of the start of the premiere — all propelled by one pinned tweet.
