HBO’s advertising and marketing crew continued to drop teasers for the present over the next 12 months, together with one other picture shared in partnership with Ps for its Summer time Sport Fest occasion and the primary trailer throughout “The Final of Us” Day 2022, which gained over 57 million natural views in its first 72 hours (the most-watched promo within the community’s historical past, in line with HBO).
“We known as it breadcrumb content material,” mentioned Giannusa, who outlined the time period as slowly giving “the followers little items of breadcrumbs to point out that we’ll keep devoted to the supply materials, however with the premium high quality of HBO.”
She added that “you do not have to start out proper out the gate with all the things … particularly for video video games—and I feel that is simply my mantra typically—it’s a must to at all times be listening to the info and the audiences and the insights. We had been actually lucky to start out a 12 months out and be capable to map content material and experiences to particular audiences, and ensure it spoke to them to ensure this factor lands.”
For instance, when initially planning the “The Final of Us” marketing campaign, Giannusa anticipated to must launch explainer posts, letters of endorsement from the sport’s creators and side-by-side photos of the present and recreation to show its constancy. However these components had been known as off after they noticed the fandom rallying round content material and shepherding new followers into the neighborhood.
“We simply let the followers do their factor and noticed that conduct—we do not actually need to create all this game-to-screen content material, as a result of the followers are doing it for us,” mentioned Giannusa. “Let’s proceed to gas the content material sphere with issues like [“HBO’s The Last of Us”] podcast that may converse to them and get them speaking about subsequent episodes.”
