At this point most people don’t care or know what Gilmore Girls is. But Wednesday marked nine years since the show was on-air, which equals about 100 years in TV land. Big things are happening as the interwebs celebrate this Gilmoreversary. Just check out the trending #gilmoregirlsrevival.
As the die-hard fans know, on November 25th Gilmore Girls is back as a mini series event on Netflix with four all-new 90-minute episodes named ‘A Year in the Life’. The episodes conveniently titled after the seasons. Now, unless you’re a member of Team Logan or Team Jess you might not be tuning in during your post-turkey haze, but here’s some reasons why you should be paying attention to Netflix’s latest original venture.
How does the all-powerful, content leader re-launch this quirky mother/daughter show? Bringing in an all-star new cast, changing locations, giving the cast accents?
No. They simply tell the story that fans already know and let the audience’s memories do the marketing for them.
For starters, they brought back to life the .org website of the fictional town of Stars Hallow, loosely based on all upper middle class small towns in Connecticut. Somehow the site hasn’t been updated since 2007 (weird, right?). The site showcases historical information about the town but also sneakily connects to Netflix and the show’s Facebook page, which has almost 3 million fans. Written from the point of view of the town’s infamous grocer, users get immediate interaction with the familiar character and a reminder of the show’s sarcastic and fun tone. In short, they took existing creative and branding and added today’s date. This allows existing fans to interact with a world they already know, and new fans to bond with the Gilmore brand through a platform they already understand - a visitor’s guide.
More importantly, on Wednesday Netflix took over 200 existing coffee shops across North America and named them after the show’s hang out - Luke’s Diner. They promised free coffee from 7am-noon. And that’s all.
So, I went to the pop-up because curiosity got the best of me, and one of the two MA locations is only 10 minutes from my apartment. At 7am I joined over 200 fan girls in line and we were all wondering and hoping for the same thing: would we be walking into a real Luke’s Diner? Would there be a cute curmudgeon diner owner in red flannel behind the counter? Again, the answer was no. Deep down I knew that the actual Warner Brothers back lot set wasn’t going to appear in Brighton but still I waited for over 2 hours to look inside and most importantly, I wasn’t the only one.
In the end the café was only scattered with a handful of show-related cardboard signs and a very patient wait staff wearing Luke’s signature backwards hat. I left with a paper cup hugged with a Gilmore Girls koozie stamped with a potential prizewinning Snapchat ghost and a picture next to a 6-foot Luke Danes cutout. And yet, thousands of people ranging from about ages 18-48, showed up to get inside and by noon there were over 30,000 #lukesdiner mentions on Instagram and even more interactions on Twitter and Facebook.
Why did this work when it seemed Netflix simply partnered with a cardboard company for a few hours? Because for 2 hours I talked with other fans about the show (and maybe sang the theme song a few times) and then for the rest of the day we all posted about it. And people who couldn’t attend then posted about it. And then people who didn’t care posted. All Netflix really did was get us all together and the magic of social media did the rest. The free coffee or what the pop-up actually looked like didn’t matter.
This is a great reminder that a re-launch or re-branding doesn’t have to mean starting from scratch. You can use the existing pieces that work and let the existing users and customers do the heavy lifting for you. Let their past positive experiences with the brand guide your approach in creating a marketing campaign. People like the feeling of comradery and sharing memories. They like to say ‘remember when…’ and get an enthusiastic head nod in return from someone else who gets it. Get people talking about something they know and they’ll keep talking. And if that doesn’t work just give them more coffee and something to watch the day after Thanksgiving when they aren’t getting off their couch anyway.