AMC Scares Up a Halloween Hit with Social Media

With the buckets of Emmys taken home a few weeks ago for their big hits Mad Men and Breaking Bad, AMC’s original programming is certainly on a roll. It can’t be denied that the little station that used to play old movies like Summer Stock at 3 a.m. has morphed into a power-hitter in the world of cable television. While its programming choices have been savvy, the other thing AMC does with pinpoint perfection is promotion. Mad Men and Breaking Bad have been pushed as must-see shows that are to be viewed if you want to be considered cool by your coworkers. With sleek ads and interactive social media marketing, the series’ are synonymous with quality in the same way HBO was once upon a time.

Now the marketing for AMC’s new horror series, The Walking Dead, hopes to bring in a slightly younger audience by first becoming a social media hit.

The show, which won’t even premiere until Halloween night, already has more than 14,000 fans on Facebook while igniting message boards across the Internet. The Walking Dead made a huge splash at ComiCon this year in hopes to get the fan-boys and fan-girls drooling over the zombie-riffic series. It worked. Now the next promotional tier in The Walking Dead domination plan involves the release of three heart-pounding trailers. Scary, mysterious and thrilling, the trailers were released online last week and since have been posted on nearly every pop culture blog on the web. While the spots don’t exactly hand over the plot goodies, they effectively let you know that this is another required-viewing series if you want to keep your hip TV viewer status. On Facebook and Twitter, the spots are being linked and pushed while interviews with the show’s creators are posted with behind-the-scenes footage.

The Walking Dead couldn’t happen at better time. Not only are zombies the new vampires, but with Lost and other nerdtacular shows no longer on the air, the moment is now for the show to catch fire. AMC effectively has tickled our curiosity using smartly-played social media moves. We can’t wait to see The Walking Dead – and what the network has up their sleeves next.