by Laurie Sullivan @lauriesullivan, February 3, 2017

The Magicians, which airs on the Syfy cable network, doubled down for Season 2 on YouTube to introduce the show to new audiences and drive viewership through video and search.

Syfy’s marketers successfully used YouTube as their primary platform to drive awareness ahead of the first season and this time created 18 custom spots to reach a variety of viewers.

The campaign launched on YouTube a few weeks ago and is seeing view-through rates higher than the average for entertainment-related TrueView ads. In fact 18 custom spots features the cast discussing topics like “Adulting,” a way of referring to adult responsibilities, usually in a tongue-in-cheek or snarky way. The cast also answered related questions that people had likely searched for on YouTube.

“We tapped into that cultural conversation,” said Colleen Mohan, SVP of brand marketing at Syfy.

“It’s relevant to the journey the characters in The Magician go through.”

Based on the best-selling novels by Lev Grossman, The Magicians centers on Quentin Coldwater and his 20-something friends as they discover their magical abilities and unwittingly unleash a dark force that threatens to destroy the magical world as they know it.

The spots running as YouTube ads reach out to Millennials, Hispanics and fans of the fantasy genre.

Syfy’s campaign with the cast of The Magicians taps into this trending social conversation, highlighting the quarter-life crisis themes and approachable characters that resonate with Millennials with an added layer of magic and fantasy.

Mohan said Syfy’s marketers did research on the most searched-for topics and how-to videos with the goal of having the specific content of each video reach the most relevant audiences through specific keyword lists tailored to each video topic.

For example, Syfy chose “how to make a salad” or “how to hard boil an egg” and related keywords for these types of videos. And groups of specific cooking channel and video placements were created to reach users for the “How to Watch Cooking Videos” spot.

“Once someone engaged with one of the how-to videos, we were able to remarket them and take them deeper into the show,” she said. “It’s usually a trailer that explains more about the show.”

The campaign aided the second season premiere of The Magicians, Syfy’s and Universal Cable Productions’ fantasy series, to outperform its Season 1 premiere across all demos.

Social conversation took off during the January 25 premiere episode, earning 327 million estimated Twitter impressions, more than double the first season premiere at 148 million.

MediaPost.com: Search Marketing Daily

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