With help from a hacker, we created Tweets under #TeenWolfFR that broke Twitter's design code, lending the impression that slash marks were cutting through them. They went live on October 18th 2013, a night of a full moon. The hack was composed of three claw marks, to announce the third season of the show. Some fans woke up to find their timelines shredded and freaked out, worried that their smartphones were damaged. But once they understood the real cause, they excitedly shared it with friends and followers!

The bug appeared on smartphones and desktops worldwide, yielding nearly 10,000 retweets with a viral rate of 26% (compared to an average rate of 1-3% for Twitter campaigns), 60 million impressions (in a week!) locally and internationally, 120,000 instances of engagement (10x more than Twitter’s forecast), and recognition from Twitter itself — which now uses the Teen Wolf example in its best practices presentation.

It even went past show fans and became an element of digital language: 3,400 “shredded” tweets were shared without a #TeenWolfFr hashtag.