Blurring the lines between real life and fiction, The Disappearing Girl starred YouTuber Collins Key acting as a version of himself in a scripted YA series that lived on YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat. The story started with Collins dropping the geolocation of a surprise meetup for his fans—at which we seeded our core actors, including Collins’s love interest. As fans watched, snapped, and tweeted, Collins selected our actress to be the subject of his romantic trick. Smitten, Collins asked the mystery girl for her name, but she ran away, leaving him with only an Instagram handle—a single clue that Collins turned to his fans to decipher. As Collins chased the girl through L.A., seemingly in real time, the fans used their phones to play the role of wingmen and social sleuths.

To make a scripted series feel inherently social, we built a world that was both full and flexible by breaking the show into four distinct phases:

· Character Development: Along with Collins’ own social channels, we backfilled an additional 16 new character handles months before the series launched inviting fans to cyber-stalk the story.

· Meetup: Here we established Collins as sponsored by AT&T within the show world, giving the brand an authentic reason to be.

· Show Live: We rolled the series out over a single week with all social tracking/ deepening the story, and engaging directly with audience members. To preserve the authenticity, we did not use paid media during this time.

· Post Show: The series ended with final live-streamed meetup where the fictional nature of the show was revealed. After we switched to a traditional entertainment marketing targeting new fans for a binge experience.

Fans didn’t just watch the show, they engaged with it like they were trying to help a friend find the girl of his dreams leaving comments like “IVE FIGURED IT OUT!! I went to her instagram (@unlockalldoors) Then I clicked on her picture that she had and tapped on it again and it lead me to (@open_me_1) After that I went to the third picture and pressed it and that lead me to (@solve.me1) pressed the picture and read a couple of comments+the pictures she posted = Santino Bros.” This level of deep engagement helped The Disappearing Girl blow past all KPIs - with over 31MM total video views, 111MM total impressions, and 2MM total engagements. Merchandise, meetups and press expanded the reach with Access Hollywood, WJLA, WLOS, Just Jared, Mashable, Sweety High, Young Hollywood, AOL, Tiger Beat, Circa, Girls’ Life, and Instant all covering the series.

Our core strategy was simple: create great friendertainment for our teen-girl targets that highlighted the role of AT&T. In practice, we created a show teen girls would love, but also ensured through consumer research that our series mimicked their mobile behavior. Our executional strategy included:

· Cyber-Stalkable Characters: As teen girls admit that they regularly cyber-stalk, we backfilled character social channels to build The Disappearing Girl’s story.

· Real Time: Our consumers expect constant connection with friends, so we nixed the traditional release schedule for one that delivers content like a teen would to update their friends.

· Call and Response: Given that teens expect to be part of the conversation, we built a social ecosystem modeled on native conversation: questions, praise, debate, requests, and one-to-one messaging.

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Imagine you’re sitting in a school lunchroom, watching a girl laugh as she stares intently at her phone. Is she watching TV or a friend’s Snap story? Does it even matter? For teens, technology has made it so that friends are their entertainment and increasingly, they expect their entertainment to behave like a friend. We call this trend “friendertainment,” and mobile phones are its primary delivery mechanism. To date, this seismic shift has primarily been recognized only as a change of interface and not recognized for its potential to forever change the way we engage with stories. Our goal was to tap into the unique properties of mobile phones to create a new type of mobile-storytelling that truly highlighted the role of AT&T in creation and consumption—thereby driving brand relevancy and positioning AT&T as an innovator. Success would be defined not only by reach, but also by audience engagement.