Cruel Summer Partnerships & Social Campaign
Cruel Summer Partnerships & Social Campaign
I planned, led, and executed not only our partnership strategies but also several of our social strategies for Cruel Summer.
Talent worked with: Olivia Holt (Cruel Summer [Season 1], I Didn’t Know It, Marvel’s Cloak and Dagger), Chiara Aurelia (Cruel Summer [Season 1], Luckiest Girl Alive, Tell Me Your Secrets), Froy Guitterez (Cruel Summer [Season 1], Teen Wolf), Harley Quinn Smith (Cruel Summer [Season 1], Once Upon a Time in Hollywood), Allius Barnes (Cruel Summer [Season 1], Pen15), Sadie Stanley (Cruel Summer [Season 2], The Goldbergs, Kim Possible [DCOM]), Lexi Underwood (Cruel Summer [Season 2], Little Fires Everywhere, Sneakerella), and Griffin Gluck (Cruel Summer [Season 2], Tall Girl 1 + 2).
I handled the brainstorming, initial thoughts, contract negotiation, and implementation. For Season 1 of Cruel Summer, I managed the team leading the social strategy for the series through management of our social creative agency, editorial strategy, and brainstorming as well as the internal partnership strategies. For Season 2 of Cruel Summer I was solely responsibly for all internal partnerships surrounding the series.
Leading into and throughout the Cruel Summer’s Season 2 premiere, I worked with numerous synergy partners to help amplify and promote the series returning both on Freeform and Hulu. One synergy campaign I led was working with five of our key Disney synergy partners (ABC, Onyx Collective, Hulu, FX, and Good Morning America) as well as our Freeform brand page to participate in an Instagram collab to excite Cruel Summer fans for the Season 2 trailer.
In a series of Instagram posts from the show’s Instagram page, partners collab-posted to push the page’s reach to each partner’s unique audience. These six respective posts featured custom art that when built out via the IG grid format on the Cruel Summer handle, revealed “There are two sides to every secret”. With a total of 456K unique impressions reached (64% of which were non-duplicated followers that were exposed from these synergy posts) the partnership proved a fun and effective way to create alignment across key partners & leverage excitement for the launch.
I pioneered a Twitter Quote Retweet and Instagram “Add Yours” Story synergy campaign across Disney partners to promote the release of the official trailer for Season 2. It was a nostalgic nod to the years 1999 and 2000 to help promote the hype around Freeform’s Cruel Summer Season 2. My team and I were able to garner many of partners on board to help spread the word and make a big synergy handshake across Disney social pages including Hulu, Disney+, Star Wars, Nat Geo, Walt Disney Archives, Pen15 (Hulu series), 20th Century Studios Home Entertainment, 20th TV (Family Guy pages), ESPN Andscape, espnW, Disney Cruise Line, Disney Channel, Disney Books, and Disney Style. The Twitter Thread received over 2M organic impressions alone.
While working on the Cruel Summer social campaigns for Season 1 and 2, I also spearheaded three of our social media and synergy talent takeover projects. The first of those was a social takeover with three of the Cruel Summer Season 1 talent: Olivia Holt, Harley Quinn Smith, and Allius Barnes at Disneyland and Disney California Adventure. I worked with the Disney Parks team to execute a special takeover of the Avengers Campus, a new land at Disneyland dedicated to Marvel Super Heroes. This was our first social talent takeover during the pandemic so it was truly a success working through new challenges. I directed and filmed the talent throughout the day talking about their love for Disney and Marvel as well as the memories from Season 1 of Cruel Summer. My team and I then edited together the photos, videos, and IG Story content for posting across the Disneyland, Disney Parks, Freeform, Hulu, and Cruel Summer pages.
Some key content highlights:
The second social and synergy activation I led was a Cruel Summer takeover at the Disney Creators Celebration held at Disneyland. I worked with our partners at Disney Parks to take over Pixar Pier (within Disney’s California Adventure Park) at night as part of the Disney Creators Celebration event where 200+ Disney superfan influencers (with anywhere from 40K - 2M followers) attended. My team and I themed the boardwalk area to the series and had the Cruel Summer talent join the event’s meet n’ greet with fans portion. I managed the event from the Freeform side and executed custom branded banners, a photo backdrop, napkins, postcards, pin giveaways, custom treats, and a 360 photo / video booth. The Disney superfan influencers posted about our event allowing us to spread even more awareness that Season 2 was coming.
Key content highlight:
For the last social and synergy project for the series, I worked with our partners at Disney Parks to execute a talent takeover at Disneyland with Sadie Stanley, Lexi Underwood, and Griffin Gluck in promotion of Cruel Summer Season 2. I was in the field at Walt Disney World for this one — directing the talent and capturing content with the talent on both my phone and camera. My team and I then edited together the photos, videos, and IG Story content for posting. Disney Parks shared content I captured across the Disneyland Instagram (8.6M followers) and Disney Parks Instagram (2.4M followers). We also shared the content across Synergy partner pages (Hulu, D23, Disney Channel), Cruel Summer pages, and Freeform pages. Sadie & Lexi also shared on their personal pages. Overall, it was a successful marketing campaign for the series!
Some key content highlights:
