The production team behind "Veronica Mars" provides an inside look at how new interactive media can turn a fan favorite into a viable TV success-- with some help from dedicated viewers.
As the assistant to two of the executive producers at "Veronica Mars," Hadley Klein spends his days immersed in the world of Neptune's smartest teen P.I. Hadley's been with the show since the second season and recently transitioned his love of surfing the net into an active, online viral marketing campaign for the show. Hadley is a graduate of Emerson College in Boston, Mass.
Jodi Harris: You are part of the production team of the CW show, "Veronica Mars," a show with a huge fan following that has been on shaky network ground since it debuted in 2004. What exactly is your role in marketing the show, and what are your main challenges?
Hadley Klein: Since June, I've been working on online promotion. Coming out of last season, we were a little flustered. We just felt like we have such a smart online community -- our fans are very tech savvy, and they are just very intelligent people -- that we were underselling them [in our promotional efforts], and they were doing a lot of the work on their own. So, we have tried to come up with a way to enhance what they were already doing, and promote the show to new potential viewers at the same time.
Harris: And how hard was this task? Between The CW, which airs the show, and Warner Bros., which owns it, you must have to get a lot of sign-offs for everything you try to do.
Klein: We essentially just drew up a plan and took it to the studio and said, "Here is what we have got. What can you let us do? And, what can we do ourselves? What can you do for us?"
Harris: This has to be the case for some of the marketing partners' efforts as well. Such as the VEOH site, where you can make your own promotional clips for the show, but can't use most of the actual footage from the show.
Klein: We love that website, they have been fantastic to us. They have a pretty solid plan. It's a very innovative idea, as well. The greatest thing about the clips on VEOH is you can embed those anywhere and just pass it along. It looks like YouTube, right now, though it's about to launch into something a bit more complex.
Harris: Why were non-network sites like VEOH and MySpace good choices to take the lead in connecting with the show's strong fan community?
Klein: Honestly, I have no grasp on how much the MySpace pages do or do not improve publicity. We can just hope that our almost nine thousand online friends link up with their many friends, essentially just passing the word about Veronica Mars along. I think it's just great to encourage the fans who have been so committed to us for these past two seasons.
We wanted to center the campaign with a MySpace show page; it's been a great tool in assisting us in getting the attention of those fans, which I think are is a different audience than the fans that are going to say, Television Without Pity, or the other fan sites that have popped up.
Harris: Let's talk about some of the more guerrilla tactics that are going on to promote the show, like the WatchVeronicaMars.net site, and MarsInvestigations.net.
Klein: Yeah, those are my two favorites, because they tend be very, very active. The WatchVeronicaMars.net folks, they go by the name 'Cloud Watchers.' At the end of the season last year, when we were waiting to hear if we were going to get picked up, they actually hired an airplane to fly across the city [with a message asking the CW to renew the show]. It was really cool-- it just showed how committed the fans are to it.
We also have the writers doing podcasts as often as possible. We have filmed behind-the-scenes videos. We went down to San Diego and shot some of the cast members in their daily lives, and it has been really fun.
Harris: I have seen a few of the video recaps [on VEOH], and I think that is my favorite part of the campaign: that it gives the fan the chance to give their input, and their opinions on the plot points.
Klein: They are so creative. One of the fans reenacted the scenes with Barbie dolls. Our favorite has been this guy who wrote a song summarizing the first two seasons.
Harris: The show has gotten picked up for the full season, but it is fewer episodes than expected. So, are there any particular challenges for your team to maintain fan support and increase the fan base, at this point, when you are still not sure that it is getting the attention that it really deserves?
Klein: As always, all of the producers are constantly hounding the network for as much promotion as possible. You know, "Can you air our promos during "America's Next Top Model" and other top-rated shows?" We want as many eyes to see them as possible.
This season there's a new world on the show, too, which also helps. Now that she's gone to college she lives in this more adult world. That gives us more of an opportunity for web promotion in terms of relating to the age of the characters. We've created profile pages for each of our primary characters. What college student doesn't have a MySpace? Our characters would have these MySpaces. They would be familiar with all this online technology.
Harris: So, if you were given absolute free reign, as far as the web promotion is concerned, what would you want to do if you did not have to worry about what The CW wanted, or what Warner Bros. wanted?
Klein: The CW and Warner Bros. have both been great throughout this whole process. They have been nothing but helpful and excited throughout this whole process. They have been really pro-MySpace. I think what would have been great, had we had a lot of money, would be to do the big MySpace banners; to buy the MySpace background; to do bigger, more engaging, websites like "Lost" or "Heroes" does.
Harris: So what's next?
Klein: WB has struck a deal with this website call StarBrands, Basically, you see something you like on the show (such as an item of clothing a character wears), and you can go to this website where there's a direct link to the store you can buy it in. It's another great opportunity for fans to connect with the show beyond Tuesdays at 9 PM.
Jodi Harris is managing editor of iMedia Connection's Entertainment Spot. Read full bio.