FX Networks - Spread the Strain

FX wanted a unique marketing campaign for the 2nd season of their TV show, The Strain. Fans were invited to play the Twitter game ‘Spread The Strain’.

The game works like this:

  • Visitors to the site would OAuth into our Twitter app returning the user to a view that allows them to invite their followers to play the game.
  • The user is then invited to Tweet about the show using a hashtag to earn points towards winning a prize & unlocking exclusive previews.
  • Each time a tweet with the game’s hashtag is retweeted the score is amplified by the number of the retweeter’s followers.
  • Community rewards are unlocked as the users’ collective score grows.

The scoring system mimicked the ‘vampire virus’ in the show. A simple admin allowed the social team to monitor engagement. @chrisltd was the other half of this project.


Role
Technical Lead
Tech
Asset Pipeline, Clockwork, Google Analytics, Google Search Console, HTML, Heroku, Hirefire, Homebrew, JavaScript, OAuth, PostgreSQL, RVM, Redis, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, SASS, Sidekiq, Text to Audio API, Twitter REST API, Vimeo API, erb, & rspec
Home on phablet
Home on phablet
Internal visualization of engagement for the social team
Internal visualization of engagement for the social team
Logged in home page with leaderboard and an unlocked community reward
Logged in home page with leaderboard and an unlocked community reward
Users connect to their twitter account and can invite accounts they are following
Users connect to their twitter account and can invite accounts they are following