The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Background
The Daily Show hardly needs an introduction, but let me try my best. As part of the multi-platform post production team, our group of weird night owls ended up driving omni-channel production strategy for all of Comedy Central and even Viacom – CC’s parent company.
Why?
Simply put: turn around time. While other shows (say Broad City) might have the benefit of crafting digital production elements (website promos, episode copy, ad insertion, subtitles, etc) with plenty of lead time before the new season ever launched, for The Daily Show and Comedy Central’s other near-live, late night shows, there was no such luxury.
For Comedy Central’s most iconic and popular show, our team was tasked with turning around everything needed for multi-platform digital production – from encoding and editing the videos for digital to building out the website and packaging for third party content providers (e.g. Hulu) – in a matter of hours… and in the middle of the night no less.
My Role:
Omni-Channel Copywriting:
I wrote high quality copy consistent with Comedy Central and The Daily Show’s tone and voice for all digital platforms – YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, the website, the CC app, and third party content providers.
Digital Production:
Our cross-functional, collaborative team was 100% responsible for getting The Daily Show and Comedy Central’s other late-night shows out the door each night. I put out fires, dealt with last minute technical issues, made in the moment decisions, and drove editorial direction for The Daily Show to ensure we met our deadlines each night.
Visual Branding:
I chose high quality stills to promote each episode, serving as the homepage hero image for The Daily Show and often Comedy Central website and app.
Website Promos
Case Study: viral current events
The moment I saw Jon’s heartfelt response to the indictment verdict in the Eric Garner case, I knew we had something special on our hands. The uncharacteristically serious moment covered the first minute and a half (approximately) of Jon’s regular monologue.
Knowing the public would be eager for reactions to the verdict, I made the decision to pull this video out from the full act one of the show to highlight as its own clip, so the Comedy Central social media team would be poised to share this timely content without delay.
This in the moment, quick thinking paid off, and the stand alone clip immediately went viral the next morning, amassing over 4 million views and nearly 100,000 shares on Facebook.
Outcomes:
4 million+ views
80,000+ reshares
Social Media Copy
