TBS is playing for viral viewership response for its second season of “House of Payne” based on buzz about an original song from Def Jam Recordings’ Chrisette Michele in a music video featuring the show’s cast.
The 60-second music video, showing the cast doing what’s been dubbed ‘The House of Payne Shuffle,’ debuted last Thursday during the TBS screening of “Diary of a Mad Black Woman.” The video also has a presence on several Web sites, including www.TBS.com, www.defjam.com and Michele’s MySpace page in a campaign TBS is expecting will generate significant viral momentum.
“We think there’s a great sharing factor that will happen virally with the music video,” Vicky Free, vice president of marketing for TNT, TBS and TCM, said.
Free said TBS was exploring ways to leverage Michele’s tune, “I Gotta Love Jones,” which will be the accompaniment to a summer-long campaign promoting upcoming episodes.
Four new “House of Payne” episodes will run back-to-back for the African-American family sitcom’s season primetime debut on June 4. A two-minute, thirty-second video about the making of the music video hits movie theaters around the country on June 6.
Free said the campaign’s objective is to energize the show’s core fan base and entice new viewers to watch.
“It really is tapping into the fans’ passion for the show and breathing some new promotional energy into the show,” she said.
Feedback from self-described ‘super-fans’ of the series fueled TBS’s deal with Def Jam, since those core viewers said they like Michele’s music.
The music video will get airplay on all Turner networks, including CNN, with frequency in programming that draws a large African American audience, such as the National Basketball Association on TNT.
“House of Payne” was last season’s top-rated ad-supported cable sitcom. African Americans comprise 70% of its audience, according to Free, who said TBS believes the sitcom has a broad appeal.
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