An Australian maid has been caught in the act, her devious secrets and devilish ways have been uncovered causing quite the mess…
Universal Channel and MediaCom sent their very own Devious Maid onto the streets of Sydney to cause havoc and play pranks on unsuspecting members of the public. As each reaction was captured on camera the plot thickened, culminating in a fun two-minute video that gave the audience a taste of things to come when Devious Maids premiered on 24th July.
The stunt was amplified in typical gossip channels: social media and breakfast radio. But the real key was ensuring the stunt was humorous and disruptive enough to inspire its female target audience to share.
We enlisted our own 'real life' Devious Maid. The sassy, seductive and salacious actress reflected the characters and brand voice of the TV show. The raven haired South American was let loose on the streets of Sydney wearing a maid's outfit, where she wreaked havoc and tricked an unsuspecting public with her dirty deeds.
Hidden cameras were used to capture the public's reaction to the Maid's peculiar antics. Rudely interrupting couples at dinner, conspiring to get people to help dispose of a badly disguised dead body and shopping for weapons in a hardware store were just a few of the tricks she played.
The pranks escalated and when those that were tricked started to freak were handed a Devious Maids 'calling card', confirming they had been tricked by the Devious Maid, and with details of when they could catch the TV premiere.
Reactions were hilarious and created the 'must see' and shareable element their video needed.
News of the devilish stunt broke via an integrated radio segment presented by KIIS FM radio royalty, Kyle and Jackie O - no strangers to celebrity gossip and salacious stories. They also filmed their own deviant playing saucy pranks on the Sydney public and further radio spots ran throughout the week leading up the series' TV premiere, fuelling gossip among the female audience who now knew the date and time of the Devious Maids TV premiere.
A social video seeding strategy across YouTube and Facebook gave the video an explosive launch and sustained intrigue leading up to the TV premiere.
The video of the Devious Maid's escapades achieved a 92 per cent content likeability score and 345,000 views on YouTube. Absolute audience retention data also showed it performed significantly above YouTube averages.
Summary of results:
Season one of Devious Maids reached 764,300 unique viewers across the six weeks it was on air.
Amongst People 25-54, the 8:30pm premiere telecast delivered a season average of 20,500 viewers - surpassing its time slot average by 56 per cent and the primetime average by 95 per cent.
36 per cent of the people who turned into the premiere episode not having watched the channel in the previous four weeks.
Universal Channel rose dramatically to rank #6/89 on the Pay TV platform in its main primetime time slot.
By getting people talking about the antics of Universal Channel's very own Devious Maid, MediaCom challenged the dominance of trailer marketing and gave Universal Channel the audience it deserved.