Triggering a Mob Mentality

What better way to build anticipation for a show about the Mob (capital M) than to harness the power of the mob (small m)?

As noted by Andrew Adam Newman in The New York Times, TNT has launched a multifaceted marketing campaign designed to intensify pre-launch support for and ongoing engagement with “Mob City,” the cabler’s ambitious new series about real-life mobsters in 1940’s Los Angeles.  The key plank in the campaign is a Twitter-fueled initiative, created by Deutsch New York, through which the entire script of the first episode (except for the ending) is released in a stream of more than 400 tweets leading up to the show’s premiere. (Marketing support also includes print ads created to run in “mature audience” comic books published by members of Bonfire’s ComicsUnited Ad Media Network.)

Rich in relevant content, this is a program as ingenious as it is contagious, not the least because it recognizes and embraces a gospel truth that we at Bonfire have been preaching since we unfurled our tent close to three years ago – that the passion of the pop culture superfan is an enormously powerful promotional accelerant, one that must be handled thoughtfully and judiciously, lest it go up in flames.

You can read the entire Times article here, but of particular note to us was this assertion by social media strategist and author, Rohit Bhargava.

“If they’re trying to become another ‘Scandal” right out of the gate and hit everybody, it won’t work…But if they’re doing it as an influencer campaign, where they connect with even only a thousand superfans who are going to tell everyone else, it will do well.”

That’s a mob mentality we can fully support.