Title	SHARKNADO TWITTER-TORNADO
Brand	TELE 5 GERMANY
Product/Service	TELEVISION SHOW „SCHLECHTESTE FILME ALLER ZEITEN“ (WORST MOVIES OF ALL TIME)
Category	F04. INNOVATIVE USE OF SOCIAL OR COMMUNITY
Entrant Company	SAINT ELMO'S Munich, GERMANY
Advertising Agency	SAINT ELMO'S Berlin, GERMANY

Name	Company	Position
Kevin Proesel	Saint Elmo’s Berlin	Creative Management Director
Juliane Krause/Akelbein	Saint Elmo’s Berlin	Strategic Concept Developer
Matthias Grebin	Saint Elmo’s Berlin	Art Director
Susu Rachidi	Saint Elmo’s Berlin	Art Director
Loredane Klier	Saint Elmo’s Berlin	Editor
Linda Buchmann	Saint Elmo’s Berlin	Editor
Soraya Petermann	Saint Elmo’s Berlin	Consultant
Laura Schramm	Saint Elmo’s Berlin	Project Manager

Creative Execution

Since we wanted to keep things simple and costs to a minimum we used existing online-services and combined them with a twitter auto-following. We created ten twitter-profiles with individual shark-characters and prepared them with over 1.000 shark-themed quotes and small humorous texts to be posted. Ten days before the premiere we placed a bait on Tele 5’s facebook- and twitter-pages, consisting of a warning not to use the hashtag: „#schlefaz = death“. Users posted #schlefaz and the sharks assailed timelines. Each user got a greeting followed by a daily wave of posts from each of the sharks. A true twitter-tornado.

With very small budget and minimal effort this campaign proved to be highly effective. During the ten days of the campaign, fans of Tele 5 used the hashtag extensively over 2.000 times (Fig. 1). With over 165.000 direct contacts and almost 600.000 timeline deliveries (Fig. 2) we topped the client’s expectations. The hashtag #schlefaz made it into the top-5 twitter-charts in Germany (Fig. 3). All in all we achieved interactions at 37% per tweet and 152% per follower (Fig. 1). On facebook Tele 5’s channels profited too with skyrocketing increase of both likes and talking-about-rates (Fig. 4 & Fig.5).

We were asked to create a twitter-campaign for German TV-station Tele 5 to communicate the free TV-premiere of Sharknado, the mega-successful US B-movie. Tele 5 caters to fans of the trash-genre with its format „Die schlechtesten Filme aller Zeiten“ („Worst Movies of all Time“, short „SchleFaZ“) and was proud to air Sharknado (plot: sharks raining out of a tornado over LA). In the social web fans were eagerly expecting the premiere actively using the hashtag „#schlefaz“. So why not instrumentalize exactly that? Our idea was simple but striking: what could depict the movie’s tagline better than a shark-storm? Only virtually, on twitter – and unleashed by the careless use of the hasthag. Posting „#schlefaz“ people were followed automatically by a gang of sharks on twitter, having their timelines invaded for 10 days with a tornado of funny shark-posts. That way we created a huge buzz perfectly meeting the fans’ expectations.