Strategic Objective: Generate media attention in popular culture around QVC, and leverage the attention to drive a wider audience to tune-in to QVC bringing awareness to the marketer’s plethora of product offerings.
Solution Overview: Partner QVC with America’s beloved characters, The Muppets, in a cross-promotion for their film Muppets Most Wanted. To drive awareness and tune-in, we created and executed a three-part media stunt and content series placing a fabricated Hollywood drama into popular culture: a 40-year feud between Miss Piggy and Joan Rivers that no one knew about - until now.
QVC needed to target a wide demographic without alienating its core female consumer. To bring mass awareness, our strategy was to find a formidable partner that supported QVC’s brand ethos and was well known by many. Tapping into company-owned entertainment databases and the company ecosystem provided advance knowledge of an upcoming motion picture sequel, Muppets Most Wanted. Having been created by Jim Hensen in 1955, The Muppets were a rare entertainment property that had multi-generational appeal.
The partnership kicked off with QVC announcing that Miss Piggy would be featured at its Red Carpet Style Event, a QVC special broadcast and sales event celebrating the Academy Awards. Miss Piggy supported the announcement in Us Weekly where she also announced she was launching her own lifestyle brand on QVC, and was planning to take the title "Queen of Shopping" away from Joan Rivers, who sells an eponymous jewelry line on QVC. Directly baiting Rivers, Piggy said, "Moi will be the greatest thing to come to QVC, and I look forward to being the reigning queen of shopping. If Joan Rivers can do it, I can do it better. How do you like them apples, Joannie!?”
Tensions flared the night of the Red Carpet Style Event with a high-profile stunt. In the middle of the celebrity-studded live broadcast, photographers captured Joan Rivers running out covered in cake. The next morning, a backstage video leaked on YouTube that revealed Miss Piggy had pushed Joan into the cake.
To build additional buzz the next week, we partnered with E! News to exclusively release a 4-minute documentary, Behind The Feud, revealing the cake incident was merely the tip of the iceberg to a decades long rift between the two diva comedians. Adding fuel to the fire, Miss Piggy released the world premiere commercial for her new lifestyle brand for QVC called 'Moi' on Good Morning America as her attempt to compete with Joan. As Miss Piggy begins promotional rounds for her new film, the press integrated the Joan Rivers feud storyline into their interviews on their own. Miss Piggy and the Muppets come to QVC for the day. Over 50 interstitial like scenes were filmed in advance to compliment live video capture of the Muppets 'taking over' QVC studios.. Miss Piggy's lifestyle brand debut turns out to be a disaster, and the day culminates with Joan Rivers and Miss Piggy making up live on air.
Over the course of the campaign, we created social conversations related to the feud for Joan Rivers’ and Miss Piggy’s social media platforms using hashtags such as: #TeamMissPiggy, #TeamJoan and #MuppetsonQVC. Tracking the conversations enabled our team to facilitate conversations between fans and celebrity influencers alike, re-tweeting and creating well-crafted responses on behalf of Joan Rivers and Miss Piggy and sharing opportunities for engagement with QVC’s social media team.