Discovery’s Strange Avatar-Yourself Campaign for Shark Week

Situation: People love sharks. Can’t get enough of them. They’re mysterious, cool and dangerous predators. The Discovery Channel is well aware of this fact and has a highly anticipated week of programming devoted to sharks annually. Since August 1987, Discovery Channel has highlighted the best informational and educational shows about sharks in nightly blocks during prime time. Every year a new slate of shark shows appear. Shark Week has become somewhat of a cult phenomenon. Referenced in popular culture and wildly adored on Internet communities such as Tumblr and Reddit, the week of programming has become a renowned event.

Solution: “Avatar Yourself” campaigns are extremely popular right now. We’ve seen them from Mad Men, Scott Pilgrim, The Simpsons and Marvel to name a few. The basic idea is to let the user upload a picture of themselves which they can edit into the relevant style or create a cartoon version of themselves from scratch in the style of the content. Discovery’s Shark Yourself avatar creator for Shark Week takes the former approach, allowing users to upload a picture of themselves which they can then add shark features to. One can have shark eyes, sharp shark teeth, a fin, and even scaly skin.

On the other hand, the micro site tool is easy to use but gives you enough manipulative power over the picture. Compared to the aforementioned examples, Shark Yourself is one of the better examples of this type of campaign to date. The options to save or send to your social sites are visible and easily accessible, with no-to-low hassle. The challenge with “Avatar Yourself” sites is usually the amount of time it takes to sit down and create one, but Shark Yourself doesn’t take much time at all.

Results: The marketing thrust behind an “Avatar Yourself” campaign is to engage users with a fun, creative tool that will then put the marketing power into their hands. By making an avatar, one becomes a part of the world of the content, in this case you become a shark. This creates a tighter bond between the property and the viewer.