With 2023 quickly winding down, the hustle and bustle of year-end wrap ups and holiday to-dos are ramping up. But at SMITHHOUSE, we wanted to take a quick pause to reflect on the hard work that turned into big wins for our clients this year.
Every day, we’re constantly reminded of how lucky we are to work with such incredible brands on truly unique and impactful campaigns, so we’re not going to pass on any chance to express our gratitude for the successes we’ve shared along the way!
Check out 5 of our top entertainment PR campaigns from 2023.
- KELCE Series Launch
As a long-time strategic partner of Prime Video, SMITHHOUSE has supported the streaming platform in promoting several of its original series. For the launch of their new sports documentary, KELCE, they knew they could rely on us to generate buzz as large as the show’s star personalities.
Despite a short lead-up to the premiere and the limited availability of the main talent due to a busy sports schedule, Prime Video wanted a full red carpet for the premiere event in Philadelphia, in addition to placing the trailer and a robust push for tune-in and highlights coverage. Our publicists leveraged their strong media relationships to secure high-impact press for the event and day-of-event staffing in Philadelphia. We worked closely with Prime Video Sports on the trailer debut while overseeing features, interviews, and the reviews campaign. Ahead of the premiere event, our team developed all assets, including the media alert and photo tip sheet, and serviced the post-event blast, which received great pickup. On the day of the premiere, our event management team handled all the logistics of press, crews and talent while also escorting talent, executives, and influencers on the carpet.
The red carpet premiere in Philadelphia was covered by all local broadcast affiliates (ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX), as well as national outlets, including Entertainment Tonight, E! News, People, and Access Hollywood. SMITHHOUSE helped launch KELCE into the pop culture zeitgeist, transcending this title from a sports documentary to a hit show that humanized and endeared the Kelce family to a multitude of viewers outside of sports fans — resulting in Kelce becoming Prime Video’s most-watched documentary film ever.
- Jury Duty Series Launch
As Freevee prepared for the launch of its newest title, Jury Duty, a documentary-style comedy series chronicling an American jury trial through the eyes of one particular juror, they included only a small circle of trusted partners in the announcement, one of which was the SMITHHOUSE team. Given the series' unique conceit, we had to carefully craft a media plan to prevent spoilers and timing was critical to accompany the show’s format, an amazing albeit not widely known cast, and early positioning for awards acclaim.
SMITHHOUSE immediately began crafting a list of top reporters to provide early access to screeners and additional color and context, while embargoing the trailer with press friendlies, which landed coverage in multiple outlets, including Variety, TV Line, Deadline, The Wrap, TV Insider, Collider, UPROXX, Gold Derby, UPI, and more.
We leveraged the show’s most celebrated name, James Marsden, to land major broadcast interviews, while providing extensive media training and maximum exposure for the show’s star juror and other supporting cast. In the weeks leading up to the finale, SMITHHOUSE also merchandised the social conversation, which lended further to Jury Duty being lauded as a breakout hit – with over 30 million views on TikTok and counting – and facilitating additional stories, such as a feature in Vanity Fair. Prior to the series finale, SMITHHOUSE helped both conceive and execute Freevee’s red carpet event at Margaritaville in Los Angeles, filling a tight red carpet with pop culture media — from Access Hollywood, E! News, Getty Images, People, Us Weekly and Shutterstock.
The show’s top-tier coverage helped further the narrative that Freevee is a must-watch destination for premium programming as Jury Duty became the first free advertising-based video-on-demand series nominated in a major Emmy category, including Best Comedy Series. The four nominations also marked the service’s first-ever Primetime Emmy nominations. The show also drew over 75 million views on TikTok while getting covered in all the top media outlets across the board — from The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Variety, EW, Vulture, and Deadline, as well as shows such as Access Hollywood, Extra, and Today Show, Live with Kelly and Mark and more.
- Fuse Media Growth Story
For the last three years, SMITHHOUSE has been the go-to PR agency for Fuse Media, a Latino-owned entertainment company that aims to empower and celebrate underrepresented and diverse voices. Fuse made it their 2023 goal to share their growth story in the FAST channel space, the brand’s expansion internationally, and their successful Upfront season.
In an incredibly crowded and competitive landscape where outlets lack sufficient staff and bandwidth, SMITHHOUSE worked closely with Fuse’s executive team to identify and leverage key industry events, launches, touting points, and differentiators that could amplify the brand. We developed a DEI and digital platform strategy to ensure that Fuse was part of important conversations surrounding diversity, FAST channels, and more. Leveraging our strong relationships with trade press and executive media training, our PR experts were able to position Fuse as a brand that has evolved into a diverse, multi-platform content provider, as well as one of the only brands with empowering, multicultural content for a young audience.
As a result, SMITHHOUSE helped Fuse secure features in Adweek and AdAge, as well as an Op-Ed from Fuse’s CEO that ran in The Hollywood Reporter during Hispanic Heritage Month. We also generated continuous support for exclusive announcements in The Wrap, ongoing coverage in Variety for various launches and premieres, and numerous panel and speaking opportunities in high-profile events across the industry — all of which amplified Fuse’s story on a national scale and set them up for an even bigger impact in 2024.
- Y&R 50th Anniversary Celebration
With the 50th Anniversary of television’s #1 daytime drama, “The Young and the Restless,” quickly approaching, CBS wanted to honor and celebrate the show in a big way. As the trusted public relations partner for four of the network’s daytime shows, working with their internal teams was a natural collaboration for SMITHHOUSE.SMITHHOUSE provided a strategic PR campaign, coordinating with all of the CBS and Sony TV departments to provide an overarching view, which aligned with all of the teams involved — including CBS Marketing, On-Air Promotion, social media, programming and more. Given the show’s very large cast, we had to ensure all talent was included in all press interviews both on and off the set, while strategically featuring the core cast members in key media interviews. SMITHHOUSE pitched and coordinated each interview while providing media training, talking points, and red-carpet event oversight to keep all messaging consistent and purposeful.
We kicked off the campaign with a 50th anniversary cast photo on People.com, while securing features in the Los Angeles Times and “CBS Sunday Morning.” Our team also secured an exclusive with The Hollywood Reporter (online and in print) for the unveiling of a 25-year-old time capsule on the Television City lot. We arranged talent interviews for a CBS primetime special produced by Entertainment Tonight and supported the 50th Anniversary Red Carpet event with staffing and extensive press coverage. And the talent SMITHHOUSE brought in for a full week of “The Talk” on CBS, helped the talk show achieve its highest-rated week of the season.Other key press included Deadline Hollywood, TV Insider, Entertainment Weekly, Soap Opera Digest, CBS Los Angeles, and Spectrum News.
- PanCAN PurpleStride Event
The Pancreatic Cancer Action Network (PanCAN) holds multiple fundraising and awareness events across the country every year; its largest and most prominent being the annual charity walk, PurpleStride, which is hosted in 60 different cities across the United States. Over 70,000 people were expected to attend nationally with a goal of raising $19 million.As PanCAN’s partner for all their non-profit PR for a variety of events and initiatives over the last few years, including PurpleStride, SMITHHOUSE was the organization's go-to entertainment and health and wellness PR firm to spearhead these efforts in some of the event’s most high-profile cities: Los Angeles, New York, DC, and Atlanta. This year, the goal was to further unify the national movement by hosting the walk in every location on one single day: April 29, 2023.Our team first focused their efforts on a local approach, utilizing our extensive connections and experiences in the TV/Film industries. We worked closely with our press connections in each city to secure specific crews, leveraging celebrities participating in the walk and pitching their stories to the most purposeful media outlets, while obtaining local press for survivors and major volunteers, as well as PanCAN’s President & CEO, Julie Fleshman.
At PurpleStride LA, SMITHHOUSE secured British comedian, actor and author, and a four-year pancreatic cancer survivor, Eric Idle, to speak at LA’s opening ceremony, Star Trek actors Kitty Swink, a 19-year pancreatic cancer survivor, Armin Shimerman, and John Billingsley, who lost his mom to the disease, and Jean and Emily Trebek, wife and daughter of the late “Jeopardy!” host Alex Trebek, who spoke to a crowd of over 2,000.
But most notably, our team secured a Today Show interview for Lisa Swayze, writer, director, actress/dancer, and wife of the late Patrick Swayze, who passed from the disease in 2009, giving her voice a national platform to spread awareness for the event just days before participating.
At each event site on event day, the team also secured several press crews for multiple hours of live coverage, covering pre-event interviews to post-event recaps. As a result of our comprehensive media strategy and efforts, PanCAN achieved the best coverage the event has ever had.
