Tactic
Face warming: get a face hot in the algorithm before launching a channel
Social algorithms recognize faces in videos and serve related content, Harmon says. To promote a Kevin James movie, James first reposted old clips to get his face trending, then launched a fresh channel as his art-teacher character. The algorithm recognized him and pushed the new videos to his existing viewers.
“So he was getting himself hot in the algorithm. Hmm. And, and then he's trending. And what we do is we took and said, okay, Matt Taylor launches fresh channel. Nothing on it. But the TikTok algorithm and the Instagram algorithm and the YouTube algorithm recognized this is Kevin James, and this face is trending elsewhere on the system. And so the moment we launched those, they started going viral because people that were— people who had been watching Kevin James videos started getting served Matt Taylor videos.”
Steal thisBefore launching a new channel, get a recognizable face trending with existing content so the algorithm carries that audience over to the new account.
Story
Kevin James, a tux, and 12 empty Super Bowl seats
The Kevin James art-teacher campaign got over a billion views. It ended with a Super Bowl stunt: Angel bought 12 seats, sat James in the middle in his wedding costume with flowers, and placed influencers nearby to post 'is that Kevin James?' He ended up on the stadium screen without any commercial message.
“And I think that campaign got over a billion views. And then at the end of the campaign, on Super Bowl Sunday, which is the weekend before, before Valentine's Day, he showed up at the Super Bowl, and we bought 12 seats at the Super Bowl, and we put Kevin in the center of 12 empty seats. And he was in a tux with his flowers in the exact costume he is in the movie, his exact wardrobe.”
Tactic
Kevin James alone at the Super Bowl: intrigue-first movie marketing
To promote a Kevin James film, an upstart studio bought him a block of Super Bowl seats, left the rest empty, and sat him in a tuxedo holding flowers, recreating a scene from the movie. They paid influencers to sit nearby and post about it, with no explanation given. Shaan says traditional studios lack the DNA for this kind of guerrilla marketing.
“And then they sent him to the Super Bowl and they bought 12 seats and they left, you know, 10 of them empty. And he sat, you know, 11 of them empty. He sat in the middle of the Super Bowl with, with empty seats on either side. He was wearing a tuxedo and he's holding flowers because that's like a famous scene from the movie. And they didn't even explain what was going on. And suddenly And then, but they paid for other influencers to be in the same section because they knew those influencers would be like, dude, that's Kevin James.”
Steal thisRestage a scene from your product in a high-attention place, explain nothing, and seed creators nearby to ask what is going on.