For Halloween 2024, Max and its LGBTQ+ platform Human by Orientation set out to expand how we creatively position theatrical releases – particularly seasonal classics like horror films – for our rapidly growing queer community on social media. We aimed to tap the deep well of talented queer comedians defining the language of TikTok to expand our storytelling approach, reach new audiences, and define Max as the one to watch for the season’s most essential movies, past and present.
Our strategy was balanced on key cultural insights: the unique relationship between Halloween/horror films and queer audiences, and the evolving language of social media formats and conventions – particularly on TikTok. We developed a campaign designed to seamlessly integrate these learnings into an original content series that was powered by our audience’s love of movies on Max, with queerness in its DNA.
At the core of our approach was a classic “watch-along” convention, reimagined and optimized for TikTok in every way. This approach balanced a much shorter format and a polished yet organic aesthetic, ensuring it felt native to the platform without losing its quality. By partnering with the right LGBTQ+ creators, we’d drive authentic engagement and position our titles at the center of cultural moments.
Our strategy would enable us to extend the seasonal promotional possibilities for our theatrical releases beyond traditional tactics, embedding them into the broader social media conversation in a way that felt community-driven and creatively fresh.
We designed a specialized strategy that cast an original pair of rising comedians from our social media community in a series of 9 original reimagined watch-along videos, capturing their reactions to iconic scenes from the original Scream film trilogy and releasing them strategically in the month of October. We were focused on producing multiple assets and test cases to better understand our audience’s content preferences, as well as maximizing the production quality and ensuring each video installment felt visually new and entertaining to viewers.
As for our creative approach, we leveraged 3 core attributes to connect meaningfully with our LGBTQ+ audience:
The result was a fast-paced, shamelessly queer spectacle with a tone and style all its own, where sharp humor met campy theatrics in a way only our hosts could deliver.
Our “Watching Scream” series was a creative and performance success – including substantial, intelligent commentary and high-value organic engagement – and provided us with key learnings about content optimization. Our audience demonstrated strong interest in theatrical content tied to queer creators, culturally relevant themes, and strategic storytelling tailored to their sensibilities.
The unique “watch-along” format and production approach has generated new opportunities for community voices to scalably and seamlessly layer over Max content, both timely and classic, with hilarious and promising results.
