SPOILER ALERT: If you don’t want to know what happened on Thursday’s Grey’s Anatomy, don’t scroll down.
It was a pretty big night on ABC last night—and no, we’re not talking about the debut of the trailer for The Astronaut Wives Club.
Grey’s Anatomy, the flagship of the Shondaland fleet, delivered one of the biggest emotional wallops of its 11-season run on Thursday (as you’ll see below).
The network knew viewers would want to second-screen it during such an important episode, given the central role Twitter plays in All. Things. #TGIT.
After all, Twitter is basically the communal #TGIT living room, with ABC’s experience proving more clearly than other networks’ how valuable the platform can be for fan engagement and community-building.
So ABC was ready for the big night with a raft of GIFs, clips, and photos timed to the show’s plot points (which, really, is pretty much Standard Operating Procedure for Thursday nights).
But what wasn’t usual: the emojis.
ABC and Grey’s used our modern penchant for expressing emotions with those tiny little ideograms and amplified it by a factor of like a bazillion.
The result? A stream which—thanks to the lack of words—made for quick reading and sharing by viewers glued to the episode.
ABC found a way to keep their important #TGIT Twitter audience engaged, even on a night when they knew viewers would find it harder than usual to turn away from the show itself:
What do you think about the way ABC and Grey’s used Twitter during their big night? What do you think is the most effective use of Twitter during an episode’s initial broadcast? Present your POV on the PromaxBDA LinkedIn Group or on Twitter via @PromaxBDA #PromaxBDA.
Tags: