Marketing & Advertising

• AMC’s The Walking Dead Website posted a making-of documentary primarily about the first episode, as well as a number of other behind-the-scenes videos and interviews.

• Several scenes from "Days Gone Bye" were screened on 23rd July 2010 during the 2010 San Diego Comic-Con International.

• During the Comic-Con briefing Hurd stated that “we really are doing six one-hour movie“.

AMC’s Marketing methods

• Poster• Magazine• Trailers• Comic Con• Synergy• Star Image & Production Crew

Traditional Marketing Methods

Posters

Magazines

The Walking Dead was included on the cover of the December 2010 edition of Entertainment Weekly, which featured Rick Grimes pointing a gun at a horde of walkers.According to the journalist of the magazine, it "examines the past, present, and future" of the television franchise; "from the comic book's humble beginnings, to unlikely path to the small screen, to even more unlikely path as a bona fide hit." Kirkman was ecstatic upon hearing of the news. "I've got to say—not to kiss your magazine's a– or anything—but when they called me and said Frank [Darabont] wanted to do the show, I was like, 'Yeah, I'll believe it when I see it.' And then when AMC was like, 'We're picking up the show,' I was like, 'Yeah, alright, whatever.' When they actually started shooting the pilot I was like, 'Well, this is kind of real, this is neat.' But when they called me and said, 'Your show's on the cover of Entertainment Weekly,' I think that was the first time I was like, 'Oh my god, I can't believe this is happening to me!’”

Entertainment Weekly

• Official trailer (long)• Official trailer (short)• Teaser Trailer

Trailers

Announced at Comic-Con 2010

Promotional Booth at ComiCon 2010

Theatrical trucks during morning & afternoon rush hours

PR Tactics

• Converse all stars

Synergy

Synergy• The Walking Dead: A TellTale Game Series

Synergy• The Walking Dead: A TellTale Game Series

• The Walking Dead has earned Game of the Year honors from over 80 media outlets including Metacritic, USA Today, Wired, E! Online, Yahoo!, The Telegraph, Mashable, Polygon, and GamesRadar, and recently won theBAFTA Video Games Awards for Best Story and Best Mobile Game.

• IGN.com gave the final episode of the season an Editor’s Choice Award and a score of 9.5 out of 10 saying, “People will reference the series over and over as the benchmark for story-telling in games,” and summed up the game’s emotional impact by stating, “I cried in the final minutes, sat silently through the credits, and was speechless after the epilogue.”

Star imageAndrew Lincoln has had previous roles in TV such as BBC’s This Life and Channel 4’s Teachers, as well as the films Love Actually and Enduring Love.

Jon Bernthal previous works include: the TV series The Pacific and the film The Ghost Writer

Norman Reedus had roles in films, such as Mimic and Blade II, as well as adverts and music videos e.g Judas by Lady Gaga.

The actors, as well as others from the first series, were used during the Comic-Con panel in 2010 to raise the profile of the show.

Promise of Pleasure – Production Crew

• Frank Darabont (director) - The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile

• Gale Anne Hurd (Exec Producer) - The Terminator, Aliens, Armageddon, The Incredible Hulk),

• Charles “Chic” Eglee (Exec Producer) – TV Shows : Dexter, The Shield, and Dark Angel

• The Walking Dead was release for home entertainment on DVD and Blu-ray on 8th March 2011 (US) and 16th May 2011 (UK).

• Distributed by Entertainment One

Distribution

• The Walking Dead debuted during the same week in 120 countries.

• As part of an expansive campaign to advertise and heighten anticipation for the premiere, international broadcasting affiliates of AMC and Fox coordinated a worldwide zombie invasion event proceeding days prior to premiere of the episode in the United States.

• People were told that if they catch sight of a walker, snap a picture and post it on Twitpic using the hash-tag #ZombieCommuterDay

Distribution

• The show's official website released a motion comic based on the first issue of the original comic and voiced by Phil LaMarr.

Traditional Marketing Methods

• The event occurred in 26 cities worldwide, and were hosted in select locations including New York City, Washington D.C., London, Istanbul, Athens and Madrid. The campaign events commenced in Hong Kong and Taipei, and culminated in Los Angeles.

#ZombieCommuterDay

• “Guerilla Marketing should surprise consumers, create a memorable impression and create a large amount of social buzz.”

• Not only is Guerrilla marketing helping The Walking Dead succeed, it’s also contributing to the “coolification” of AMC — they’re trying to appeal to a wider, younger audience, and what’s cooler right now than zombies and over-the-top marketing tactics?

Guerilla Marketing

• The “creepy countdown” display in Toronto’s Union Station (bonus points for creating a Twitter contest in which people tweeted a photo of themselves with the hashtag #TWDFeb10 for a chance to win one of the severed fingers).

Countdown Clock

Cinema Screening

Twitter#TheWalkingDaughter, #visionaryleader and #OneLeggedHershal are just a few of the weekly conversational hashtags The Walking Dead has leveraged on Twitter. The use of clever hashtags provokes an ongoing social conversation throughout the entirety of the episode, and allows that conversation to continue throughout the ongoing week, leading up to the next show time.

Hype generated for Season 2

Twittersphere

Facebook• The Walking Dead Faceboo

k page has over 34 million followers.

• By using the site to create hype and generate interest keeps the audience actively engaged in the show even when the show is between series.

Instagram• Their instagram account: amcthewalkingdead

also keeps the viewers engaged.

tumblr• Their tumblr account:

thewalkingdead.tumblr.com also keeps the viewers engaged and allows fans to upload their own fan made artwork/images/gifs.

• To further the social conversation around the series, AMC brilliantly decided to include a follow-up segment that airs directly after each episode of The Walking Dead.

• Creatively enough, the network promotes The Talking Dead during commercial segments, which is when they usually introduce the weekly hashtag surrounding the hot topic of the episode.

The Talking Dead

• A Walking Dead spin-off, set in Los Angeles, following two families who must band together to survive the undead apocalypse.

Fear The Walking Dead

• AMC also launched Fear the Walking Dead Story Sync, which gives fans a great second-screen experience and lets them interact with the show while it’s on air.

Story Sync

• “Story Sync will weigh your interactions and, at the end of each episode, tell you which character you’re most like and whether you would have survived the episode.

• You can also rate other characters’ survivability via the Apocalypse Preparedness Meter, and weigh in on what you’d do if you were in their shoes. Curious how the world fell apart while Rick was in his coma? Check out Story Sync’s documents that track society’s collapse step-by-step. Then tally up the milestones at the end of each episode with Story Sync’s Road to the Apocalypse feature.”

Story Sync