A huge part of success for movies, musicians, and celebrities has been due to social media. As public relations professionals it is important to notice trends and how audiences react. Seeing how social media directly impacts aspects of the entertainment industry from movies to music and noticing how it builds success for them is important to know as a PR Professional
Dearest Readers,
The season 2 premiere of Netflix’s Bridgerton premiered on March 25th had over 193 million hours watched. This set a Netflix record and showed how popular period dramas are still. Forbes reported that Bridgeton was the most viewed series on the platform from March 21st to March 27th. The first season of Bridgerton aired during the pandemic in December 2020 and became a huge hit. Bridgerton was the most viewed English-language series on Netflix in the first 28 days it was on the platform and gained over 625 million hours viewed. Social media quickly gained interest in the series and show and started trends, theories, and video edits. Many fans praised the shows creativity with using string quartets to cover popular songs within the show. These popular songs include, Billie Eilish’s Bad Guy, Ariana Grande’s Thank You, Next, Taylor Swift’s Wildest Dreams, Maroon 5’s Girl Like You, Shawn Mendes’s In My Blood, and more.
Bridgerton continued this creative idea and season 2 brought more musical covers and even one from the Bollywood track, “Khabi Khushi Khabi Gham”. This is due to the diversity that the show has included in their show with African American actors being leads and now South Asian actors to continue the representation. Season 2 of Bridgerton has been widely successful due to social media’s new favorite couple of the season, portrayed by Simone Ashely as Kate Sharma and Jonathan Bailey as Anthony Bridgerton. Social media users have used the show’s music from the show in trends on Tik Tok and for video edits of the characters. Social media — especially Tik Tok — has helped bring major success to shows, movies, and musicians. This can be seen with the NBC show Manifest which was originally canceled due to the low ratings it received. With social media bringing a spotlight onto the show, it convinced fans to ask networks to pick the show up and air its final season to end the story.
Netflix picked up Manifest and is currently creating the fourth and final season for fans to finally get an ending. For movies this success can be seen with many Marvel films especially Spiderman’s No Way Home which was released in December 2021 bringing in 1,889 billion in the box office. With fans of Tom Holland who plays Peter Parker and Zendaya who plays MJ this series has been a massive success. This is especially due to the co-star’s recent news of dating which has been rumored for a while. Seeing their first kiss in the No Way Home movie gave fans a reason to talk about it and make video edits for the movie resulting in its success. Bridgerton has luckily also gained this success as Book Tok known on Tik Tok as a hashtag group where individuals who enjoy books share their current reads, favorite or least favorite books, and thoughts on series turning into films or shows.
Netflix has used Book Tok to advertise for the season 2 premiere of Bridgerton by sending out PR boxes of the current Bridgerton book that the series is focusing on, a teacup, a Lady Whistledown paper, tea bags, and other goodies. With this, Book Tok creators share their PR unboxing on social media for their viewers to see and are persuaded to watch the show. Bridgerton fans have also praised the show’s costume design and how it became an escape from reality during the pandemic. Shonaland, the production company founded by Shonda Rhimes is behind this series. A veteran of Shonaland, Chris Van Dusen told Deadline that, “I think the show provides an incredible escape for audiences at a time where that’s exactly what’s needed. Bridgerton is this lavish, vibrant, steamy Regency love store; it is about romance, love and joy; I think all those things are really universal themes people are responding to.” This can be seen on the many videos on Tik Tok that have made it a trend to swoon over the Bridgerton characters wishing they had romance as seen on the show.
Social media is a huge way to promote your product or service and, in this case, can determine the success of how new entertainment does. Whether a show gets cancelled, or a rising actor is spotlighted social media is the new way to determine whether a show is worth the watch or pass on. People are convinced to do a lot of things today because of the opinions of others on social media which can be very unpredictable when streaming networks are trying to determine if they should continue a show or not. This also relies on the amount of viewers watching and how long they watch for. Regardless Bridgerton season 2 has been a massive success and has built up the next two season for fans to anticipate.
Until next time fellow readers.
Guenevere Chin is a senior at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) studying advertising and marketing communications. She is a member of FIT’s PRSSA Chapter, the Asian Student Network and Film Club. She has interned at H&S Communications Agency and Zit Sticka in New York. She would like to work in the entertainment industry in public relations and eventually become a film director to tell stories, show the world her perspective and most importantly inspire others. Connect with her on LinkedIn.