Girls and Transmedia Today
Given that when Girls first aired in April of 2012, its multihyphenate helmer Lena Dunham was but a 25-year-old ingenue (albeit one with a small but beloved film in the Criterion Collection), it's no surprise that the series seems to have a strong handle on the power of social. Girls has a massive presence on the web, one that has the potential to create enormously enhancing social immersion. But as it currently stands, it comes off as little more than aggressive viral marketing.
The show's social team made the wise choice early on to coin a Twitter hashtag that was more than just the show's name: #mistakesGIRLSmake. From the first season on, this hashtag spread like wildfire, tacked on to tweets that explained viewers' own personal foibles (things that had nothing to do with the show) just as often as it was part of tweets noting the series' greatest mishaps. It was a means by which the audience could identify with the Girls beyond their Sunday night viewing (and in turn, promote the show to their network of friends all week long).
Of course, a Twitter presence (and to a slightly lesser extent, an Instagram one) is par for the course for just about any series that airs during waking hours (exhibit A: Shark Tank has an Instagram; exhibit B: the Long Island Medium is huge on Twitter).
To the credit of HBO's marketing crew, Girls' promotion takes things out of the box. Last season, HBO handed over the Pinterest reins to the show's costume designer, Jenn Rogein, who curated boards with her style inspirations for each of the characters. This season, they launched a Snapchat account, taking advantage of the platform's new Stories function to mix references to season highlights, teasers for plot twists to come, and snaps from the awards season trail.
And in an effort that is particularly key for a series that only airs for 10 weeks of the year, HBO keeps the social promotions rolling the whole year through with #GIRLSathons. They also leverage Girls' social following to promote their other series (like having Lena Dunham speculate on what Hannah might think of Game of Thrones and sharing on Instagram on the day of the GOT series premiere). But despite Girls' impressive social saturation, these efforts are triumphs in marketing at worst and social immersion at best. While the characters on the show are ripe for their own social presences, ones that could create narrative immersion, that's simply not been that this series has taken.
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