Shark Week

The Problem

Shark Week is the biggest week on Discovery's calendar, and by its 25th anniversary the audience was watching with a phone or a tablet in hand. The week needed more than a broadcast. It needed a second screen worth looking at during the show, a reason to keep the app open between segments, and moments a fan would actually pass to a friend. The work had to run across the iPad app, the website, a sweepstakes, and social, and still feel like one week.

The Work

I designed co-viewing and campaign content across the franchise, tuned to the tone of the week and made for a fan already holding a phone.

Co-viewing data-viz. For the companion experience I built "by the numbers" cards meant to be read at a glance and shared. The MythBusters card turned nine years of the show into one legible picture: 833 myths tested, 2,510 experiments, 792 explosions, 33,500 yards of duct tape, and, for the week, 23 shark myths. The design problem was making a wall of statistics feel like a single, quick read.

Shark Week Bingo. A co-viewing game that gave the audience a reason to keep watching closely. Each card filled with the things you actually see during a Shark Week episode, from a breaching great white to a shark cage, so playing along and watching the show became the same activity. It ran on the iPad app and at SharkWeek.com.

The survival guide. A single second-screen module that pulled the whole week together. Vote in the nightly #Chompdown on Twitter and Facebook to choose what Sharkzilla, the show's mechanical Megalodon, would crush next. Tweet with #SharkWeek to get on TV. Download the iPad app for Shark Week Plus and Bingo. Check in on GetGlue for stickers. Join the Thunderclap for great white conservation. Strike a #PhotoChomping pose. Six things to do on one screen, laid out over a great white that filled the right side of the frame.

The Dive Into Prizes sweepstakes. A full entry flow, presented with MSN and Universal, from the prize landing to a validated registration form to the confirmation. Each prize opened in its own detail card: a Galapagos cruise, a Jaws Blu-ray, an Xbox, a Shark Week prize pack. The confirmation did double duty, thanking entrants, handing them a Shark Week store discount, and cueing up a clip to keep them watching.

Impact

Across the iPad app, the website, the sweepstakes, and social, the pieces gave Shark Week a second screen that matched the week itself: playful, factual, and easy to hand to a friend. The "by the numbers" format held up as a template. Take a show's history, reduce it to the handful of numbers worth remembering, and design them so the whole read takes a few seconds. The survival guide showed how much a single, well-built module could carry when it connects every channel a fan is already using.