Mr. Robot (Shomi)

Mr. Robot Hack

To promote one of Shomi's exclusive programs, Mr. Robot, the streaming site and Rethink targeted its core audience of millennials with a hacker-inspired, location-based social campaign that blurred the line between the real and digital worlds.

In phase one, the campaign delivered some OOH ads centred on the show's storyline and availability on Shomi. Then it hacked its own campaign, defacing the ads by creating the illusion they were actually hacked by fsociety, the collective featured on the series.

The hashtags #weareall1sand0s and #anewcityrises were the gateway into an alternate reality game facilitated through newly created hell0fr13nd social channels (a phrase from the show). Ongoing clues to the hunt were released through the hashtag. Over three days, roughly 1,000 people searched out the bundles and posted their finds, while a social following of almost 10,000 people tracked their efforts.

The campaign drove a 5% increase in Mr. Robot awareness across Canada, led to an 80% increase in free trial subscriptions, a 300% increase in landing page views, and a total of 209,681 Mr. Robot video starts during the week of the campaign.