The Comedy Central 7 Train takeover wasn't just about bringing awareness to Awkwafina's new series. It was about breaking through the advertising monotony consumers experience on a daily basis. This first-of-its-kind activation took the media and entertainment world by storm, creating a new lane of advertising and evolving into cultural moment. A year after Awkwafina’s voice began to take over conductor duties on the 7 train, other notable celebrities including Ali Wong, Jerry Seinfeld and Whoopi Goldberg have emulated what we created for Awkwafina with their own custom messaging on public transportation across the country.

Awkwafina (Nora Lum) burst onto the scene with her blockbuster roles in Ocean's 8 and Crazy Rich Asians, quickly establishing herself in young Hollywood. Her rise to fame reached new heights when she became the first Asian-American woman to win a Golden Globe for her role in The Farewell in 2020. Coming off the heels of her Golden Globe win, Comedy Central (U.S.) was set to launch its newest series, Awkwafina is Nora from Queens, starring none other than Awkwafina. For our marketing campaign, we wanted to leverage series star Awkwafina’s growing and unique appeal to successfully launch the freshman series with mass awareness, strong ratings and earned impressions. To complement our linear goals, we set out to do something disruptive that gave a nod to Awkwafina's roots and one of the show’s core identities.

We wanted to leverage series star Awkwafina’s awareness and unique appeal to successfully launch freshman series Awkwafina is Nora from Queens on Comedy Central (U.S.) amidst a crowded TV landscape. This meant driving strong ratings for the premiere and leveraging the cast’s broad representation to recruit a diverse, new audience. A major part of Nora’s identity and this series is Queens, the titular borough of the show (and her hometown), so we knew we had to bring Awkwafina back to where it all started, Queens, New York, to give a nod to her roots and one of the show’s core identities. In addition to ratings, we needed to garner press attention and earned impressions pre-premiere to build consumer anticipation for the can't-miss TV event of the year, so we set out to develop a disruptive show-stopping marketing stunt that would capture people's attention above and beyond our traditional marketing campaign.

We turned our attention to New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) to leverage something that all residents of Queens, the series' titular borough, are familiar with - the 7 Train subway line. The MTA ranks Number 7 in the world's subway systems, with annual ridership at ~1.75 billion and average weekday ridership of ~5.7 million. The 7 Train runs through some of Manhattan's busiest, most iconic stations like Times Square and Grand Central, all the way to the heart of Queens. We wanted to leverage the scale and reach of the subway system to shake up commuters' subway rides. The challenge was that this had never been allowed by the MTA, let alone been executed ever before. After month's of collaboration and trial-and-error, we got the green light from the MTA and ran a successful test run the night before launch without any interference on the train's route.

Because the borough of Queens plays such an important role in the series' identity, we knew we wanted to target the borough and its' residents in a special way. But we didn't want to just use standard targeted outdoor advertising; we wanted to make a splash in the community. The 7 Train runs pre-recorded automated train announcements (as opposed to announcements being read by the train conductors), so we set our sights on this subway line and partnered with the MTA to bring our idea to life, all while ensuring that we did not interrupt New Yorker's commutes, a major faux pas. To add to this, Awkwafina's heightened awareness and natural comedic chops gave us the opportunity to leverage just her voice in a creative execution, something that can't always be done with new talent.

The week leading into premiere, Awkwafina became the guest announcer on the 7 Train, with custom audio recordings of her voice announcing every stop including special announcements with her signature comedic flare as trains traversed between Manhattan and Queens. This takeover was the first activation of its kind, receiving widespread national coverage and press attention. It generated an estimated $10MM+ in incremental media value and 36MM+ media impressions during its flight, an ROI of 5,600%+.The stunt was covered by National TV programs (Live with Kelly & Ryan, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, among others), news outlets (NBC, ABC, CBS) and a multitude of trade & entertainment partners (AdWeek, AdAge, Variety, CNN, The NY Times, among others). The activation lead to Comedy Central's highest-rated original series premiere since 2016, earning a .31 P18-49 rating and 1.34 P18-49 share, up +37% and +54% respectively compared to prior Season 1 launches.