To promote Invasion—a show about an alien invasion—we wanted to bring the experience of an alien invasion to life and surprise unsuspecting people with an entertaining, immersive experience that put fans in the shoes of our characters. With the pandemic making it hard to activate in the real world, we knew we had to think outside the box to bring this experience to life on social.

Our target audience, sci-fi fans and gamers with a male skew, have seen everything done within marketing. So, we had to up the ante and do something within a platform they over index on, Twitch, that would surprise them in an organic way and get them talking about Apple TV+'s new show Invasion.

In one of the wildest real-time stunts to ever play out on Twitch, Apple TV+ brought the mystery and horror of an alien invasion to the platform.? Based upon moments from Apple TV+’s new sci-fi epic Invasion, viewers all across Twitch watched in shock as their favorite streamers experienced realistic nosebleeds and eerie distortions during their livestreams. When the streams shut down completely, the chats went wild as viewers were left in the dark, starting thousands of conversations speculating what just happened, which was revealed the next day by the streamers who got 'invaded'.

We knew that a big part of the fans and followers of the Twitch streamers we partnered with were also sci-fi fans, and that a never-before stunt on the platform would generate more buzz and word-of-mouth than a campaign executed on another platform or for another audience. Our goal was to get people talking and buzzing about the show just ahead of its premiere. This work completely exploded on Twitch, dominating conversation in the Just Chatting category with many connecting the dots and speculating on what could be causing these glitches to all their favorite streamers. Aliens were a key part of that conversation organically, which worked perfectly alongside our reveal the next day that this was for Invasion, driving everyone who was curious about the event to go watch the show.

We wanted the experience to feel authentic to the platform and create mystery within the already established streamer's fanbase, which meant that during the first day of our stunt there would be no ads, no logos, and no association between our streamers and Apple. We sent streamers packages of fake blood and "how to" fake a nosebleed tutorials. The streamers recorded their nosebleed footage and we added VFX to it. On an established date, the streamer went live for a period of time in the same outfit and room they had in their pre-recorded footage. After they had thousands of viewers watching, they seamlessly cut from live footage to the pre-recorded "fake nosebleed" footage, before their feeds went dark for 24 hours. Their streams came back the next day when our ad started running within the Twitch platform and revealed it was a stunt for Apple TV+'s new show.

We successfully turned streamers into viewers by creating stunt which trended organically on Twitch and generated thousands of chats and intense conversation around the event and the show itself. Even weeks after the Twitch Invasion was over, viewers were still discussing the stunt in the streamers' chat windows.