The series tells the tale of 17-year-old Veronica Mars, who spends her days studying at the local high school, but her nights working for her father, the town's ex-Sheriff who now runs his own Private Investigator business. Which means that while Veronica may appear to be just another teenager in town, she in fact knows all the town's dirty little secrets...
"When we saw the pilot episode, the first thing that struck the team was the important role of secrets in the series - how just about everyone has a 'dirty little secret'. And we decided that we could use this central theme to really capture the imagination of the target audience, but in a really fresh and different manner," says account director Candice Shortt.
Thus was born www.tellveronicamars.com, a blog site that invites viewers to share their secrets anonymously, and allows them to read and respond to the secret thoughts of other contributors to the site. Viewers were driven to the site through a combination of above-the-line television, radio and print spots, as well as a viral email campaign and an SMS which was sent to the Student Village database.
The message on all was essentially the same - "Everyone has a secret. What's yours? www.tellveronicamars.com."
The communication was purposefully not as overt as one might expect for the launch of a new television series, to ensure that it captured the attention of the hard-to-reach teen market - a market which enjoys communication that actively engages them as opposed to simply telling them what to think.
"We were very fortunate to be dealing with a client who trusts us, and who understood the necessity for doing something slightly different to attract the attention of this market," says Shortt.
To date, the site has registered over 26 000 impressions, and the secrets just keep rolling in.
