The brief was to launch ‘Murder Island’ on Channel 4 – an innovative new show mixing reality, challenge and scripted drama. People like new formats but only if they understand them, and Murder Island was a genre-mix that people weren’t used to – our campaign needed to give them a clear understanding of what the show would be. We therefore needed to make show’s core premise clear – that teams of ordinary people (just like themselves) were attempting to solve an epic murder mystery. This would appeal to TV crime fans who love playing ‘armchair detective’ at home. The objective was to raise awareness and understanding of the new show, resulting in viewership above slot average at launch.

We created a mobile gaming experience from a clear call to action – ‘Detectives Wanted’. We excited our audience about the TV show to come by getting them ready for it – testing their detective skills across a number of different tasks and games. On a site built specifically for social, players were briefed by a real life Detective on a (fictional) murder that needed solving. Clues were hidden across different tasks and players needed to solve three different cases to prove they had what it takes to earn their own Detectives Badge. Phone calls from DCI Harding simulated a real-life briefing and text messages contained key clues, further enhancing the mobile experience. In addition, players were rewarded with exclusive access to a special trailer that would help them solve the case in the actual TV show before anyone else.

We were aiming to launch a genuinely fresh format to the nation, one which would combine their favourite elements of murder mysteries and epic adventure task shows like SAS: Who Dares Wins and Race Across The World. To understand the best way to launch, we conducted extensive consumer research amongst our broad target audience. This helped unveil two crucial insights to form our strategy. The first was that, although we were fusing formats they were familiar with, some of our audience were still struggling to grasp how the show might work. The second was that even without an audience play-along element, they would still try to crack the case themselves.

So for this part of the campaign, we created a strategy that shifted away from simply showing what Murder Island would look like, to allowing the nation to take part in the show from the comfort of their living rooms.

The experience launched on the 30th September, one week before the show aired and ran throughout the series and to date. As well as standard browsers, the site was built to work within all key social media browsers; Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat and TikTok to make the social/mobile experience as seamless as possible.

Murder Island introduced the nation to a new format of a classic British whodunit genre. This led to an episode peaking at 1.9 million viewers, which is 47% above average for the slot.

And our mobile experience played a significant part in this success story. As well as bringing this innovative show to life in the hands of the nation, over 360,000 viewers across the series were driven to the show after interacting with our mobile experience.