How do you make an unofficial pop culture holiday into an official celebration for a Broadway musical?

October 3rd became the unofficial Mean Girls Day in the world of pop culture thanks to an epic moment in the popular 2004 movie “Mean Girls.” In 2018, the hit Broadway musical adaptation wanted to join the celebration, and we set out with a series of goals: make them part of the national conversation, grow a new audience around an existing, beloved fanbase, and establish this highly celebrated day as the real deal.

We kicked off our multi-platform campaign with a video PSA from one of the most beloved characters, Gretchen Weiners. In the video, Gretchen begged viewers to help her finally make her famous slang word—fetch—happen by using the hashtag #MakeFetchHappen on Instagram and Twitter. By engaging, fans were entered to win a pair of tickets to a free October 3rd fan performance. Leading up to the event, we created Twitter Conversation Cards that featured custom animated GIFs unlocking exclusive video messages from the cast.

On the big day, we dropped 168 unique assets across every social platform, from a downloadable party pack to a Mean Girls partnership map. We also launched Broadway’s first official Facebook Fan Group, and our custom Snapchat Lens allowed fans in all locations to engage with the show by them self(ie) and got over 590K views.

Before the fan performance, Gretchen thanked fans by video for making fetch happen. But not only that, Tina Fey and Jonathan Bennett—the original movie Aaron Samuels—read a proclamation (live-streamed, of course) from New York State making the October 3rd holiday official. Mean Girls Day made its way onto National Today, the number one website for all things national holidays. To end the big day, we hosted an Instagram Live afterparty for viewers across the country.

As for the numbers? The limit did not exist for our success! Over 2.4m impressions and 179K engagements on social media. More than 5K uses of the #MakeFetchHappen hashtag and 500K uses of #MeanGirlsDay. Over 1m impressions through high-impact display campaigns, and the second-highest website traffic and social conversation to-date. But most importantly, we made fetch happen for real.