Derry Girls
for Channel 4
Derry Girls is a comedy series set in Northern Ireland, centering around a group of teenage friends living through ‘The Troubles’. The first series was a smash hit and our brief was to excite the fans for its return with a noisy, PR-able campaign.
Derry Girls Series 2
Instead of creating a traditional poster asset, the idea was to create a mural and use the photography from this asset as the poster. Once this was agreed upon, the challenge put to me was to build the campaign out across social media. Tapping into the nostalgia of when the show is set, we brought back the 90’s.
Bringing back the 90’s
We curated Spotify playlists with 90’s tracks for each of the characters and captured school photos that ran across paid and organic social media formats. Harking back to the good old days, we created an interactive version of Teletext for Instagram stories, including a working telephone line for ‘Spiritual Guidance’ from Sister Michael.
The Craic
The campaign picked up numerous press coverage including The Drum and Campaign, as well as winning Best Digital Support for a Programme at the Broadcast Digital Awards. The activity had over 27 million views, 1 million engagements and Derry Girls became our biggest comedy launch since 2007.
The campaign was said to be “simply brilliant and brilliantly simple” by the judges, as well as ticking “every box in the judging criteria”
— Broadcast Digital Awards
Derry Girls Series 3
The idea for this campaign was to bring back a special edition of Smash hits Magazine featuring the cast, whilst also including a pull-out poster which would be the out-of-home activity for the campaign. My task was again to build this out across digital and social platforms bringing to life the content being created for the magazine.
Bringing it to the 21st century
We partnered with TikTok and Spotify, combining the two platforms seamlessly in a unique experience. Fans could put themselves into the poster, using the branded effect on TikTok, and open up an animated, digital version of the magazine directly within the app. From here they could link to Spotify to create their very own 90’s playlist, customising the name and look of their mix-tape before sharing it with their mates.
The nostalgia hit hard.
It was a smash hit!
Derry Girls Season 3 became the 2nd most watched comedy on channel 4 EVER, the campaign was picked up in countless press articles including The Drum, Creative Review, and Campaign, and won a number of awards across the Clios, Sharks, Campaign Big, Promax, and the Marketing Week Awards.
