January 13, 2012 in Blog, Social Media, Twitter by kevinyourell

Sherlock Holmes and the Mystery of Social TV.

How BBC’s Sherlock is using Social Media to interact with it’s audience like never before.

I could probably write a few thousand words on predictions, forecasts and rumours about how TV is changing; how we watch it, how we interact with it, how we decide what we watch, in short how it’s going to become more “Social”. But I’m not going to. I’m going to look at how one TV show is using the tech available to it now, instead of waiting for what is to come.

With the final episode of Season 2 of BBC’s excellent show Sherlock airing this Sunday, I wanted to take a look at how the show’s creators are attempting to keep the audience interested not only between episodes but also during the long periods of time between seasons (17 months between seasons 1 and 2).

I’m not going to review Sherlock, all I’ll say is watch it, it is worth your time.

What I am interested in is the shows’ s use of Social Media, in particular Twitter. It’s expected today for a TV show to have a website, a Facebook page and a Twitter account. It’s increasingly common for the writers/producers/directors/cast to have personal accounts where they often tout the show and can interact with the audience. However, these accounts are normally personal with very little about the show, the characters or the show’s story-lines.

In the case of Sherlock it’s not just some of the cast and crew that have personal accounts and sometimes promote the show. Instead nearly every major character (and some not so major) has an individual Twitter account. The characters converse on a daily basis with each other much in a similar fashion and voice as they do in the show. Their conversation also hints to the on-going narrative in their world.

In and of itself this is nothing major or new, really just a marketing experiment, but to a geek like me who gets a little smile every time I read Holmes out-wit Watson, or Miss Hudson complain about Holmes to Watson in 140 characters or less, it’s brilliant. It keeps me involved and makes me care a little more for these characters.

Seeing what the Sherlock Twitter accounts are achieving, essentially breaking the 4th Wall of a fictional programme, I’m very intrigued. I find myself thinking about it less as a geek (in the comic and Sci-Fi way) and more about if this could or will be pushed beyond just keeping the audience entertained and become a new revenue stream.

Could we see Holmes, Tony Soprano or Jax Teller tweeting that they could use a C**e~C**a, or that they only use Brand X toothpaste in the morning. Could this be how TV is going to change, going to become Social? We’ll have to wait and see.

The true geek in me likes the added level of interaction I get with the characters through Twitter. The marketer and social media geek in me loves the use of existing tech to break that 4^th Wall. I’m interested now to see if any other TV show follows suit to such a scale.

I’m also interested to see if one particular character tweets after this Sunday’s episode (Sssh, no spoilers).

To follow the Sherlock characters check out:

@SherlockSH, @WatsonJW, @Molly_MH, @NotAHousekeeper,

@MoriartyJM, @MycroftMH, @HarryHW, @LestradeGL,

@AndersonSY, @SallyDonovan.