Hello Community fans!
UPDATE (12/21/11, 11:15pm EST):
Flashmob, Thursday 12/22, 1pm, 30 Rock Tree:
http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/eve/2758910778.html
Live Tweet/Facebook with us: Use #OChristmasTroy hashtag and Facebook event page
http://www.facebook.com/events/263523627036650/, and feel free to send pictures and videos of yourselves! This IS an INTERNATIONAL fanbase. All of you count! If you are tweeting and posting with us, I consider that you are actually part of the mob. The next flashmob/event could be in YOUR town, right?
VOTE in ALL the polls:
http://www.twitlonger.com/show/equelg
TL;DR, 1)
Buy a bunch of @GeneralMills and @YoplaitYogurt food and donate it for the holidays.
2) Buy some Community
merch. Mgr Glenn offered a
25% discount; store is by the tree in 30 rock.
Online:
http://www.nbcuniversalstore.com/?v=nbc_community
3) Have a
30 second elevator speech about why you love the show, ready to go. That takes priority over singing, right? I hate to sound culty, but
conversion and press are our jobs tomorrow.
4)
Keep it light, and don't get arrested. Scroll down six paragraphs until you see bold text to move quickly through this stuff, OK? Thanks!
I bought and donated $60 worth of
@GeneralMills and
@YoplaitYogurt food today, and donated it to
www.serenityhousenj.org. They needed cereal, soup, and pasta. I got Cheerios, Yoplait, Progresso Soup, and some milk/other items. Any Community fan, it doesn't matter if you follow this lead or just buy one @YoplaitYogurt for yourself right now; THIS is the actual one-two punch, riding the wave of the flashmob. Please go and do it, tweet it and put it on Facebook. Reasoning: Yoplait is an ad sponsor, and they are VERY responsive to us on twitter and facebook. They're sending swag to us! General Mills is their parent company. If we can show our support to them, they may be convinced to help our show with product placement, or some other fun marketing strategies. It happened to Chuck and Subway! Donations involve a higher dollar amount than other fan "Save the Show" ideas I've seen, get good press for the places to whom we donate food, and are all-around good karma. Let's go!
Also, BUY ALL THE COMMUNITY MERCHANDISE. I will be at the NBC Universal store, 30Rock, entrance by the tree, before and after. Manager Glenn is offering 25% for Community fans. He is very excited about what we are doing! I will be in NYC super early. Tweet me at @violincatherine if you'd like to photobomb the Today show, do a silent disco (see below), or get some snacks, OK? Obviously, any card carrying press member will get a funny sound bite from me too, I promise! My personal goal: to show the world a fun time with one silly stunt. For real!
My best friend just bought me a Duran Duran CD (I actually smacked myself in the head with it 20 times when I unwrapped it), so I'm perfectly happy doing silent disco somewhere with some of you (maybe I'll put my headphones on and rock out to Notorious in the subway).
Also, some people want to sing for 30 minutes, but it would be better to chat with the others and the press maybe, right? I vote to leave them wanting more. BUT, as my friends tell me, it's a mob and I can't control a mob. So I'll exit stage left and go run around. Love you guys. Don't get yourselves arrested, pretty please? We are representing a TV comedy (not Walking Dead or something like that) and need to keep things fun. We have NOTHING to do with the Occupy movement (I mean, we are buying stuff, OK?); all love and respect to them. I'm personally too frail for jail. Let's try to keep our Shawshank experiences to a minimum, like zero.
Have your 30 second spiel about why you love the show, ready to go. There will probably be singers there from all over NYC, and they and any press might ask you about the show. People want to know why we're doing this, why we love the show so much, and if we're doing this to be uppity with NBC. I love NBC. I want them to be the #1 network again, because they take risks with beautifully-written shows. So let NBC ride the happy wave with us, OK? And PLEASE don't badmouth other shows.
Also, don't worry about celebrities joining us or chiming in. WE ARE ENOUGH, and we are good enough. Please don't ask me what Dan Harmon thinks of this. He is my Justin Beiber, but right now THE FANS are saving the show. The fans are Batman!
Two big ideas for this week:
1) Please join us for a
Community flashmob on Thursday, 12/22/11, 1pm. Bring a tiny tree or picture of a tree to the BIG tree at
30 Rockefeller Center, and sing "O Christmas Tree" /"O Christmas Troy" with us!
Craigslist posting:
http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/eve/2758910778.html
Facebook event page:
http://www.facebook.com/events/263523627036650/
Historically, flashmobs are short and sweet. If security/cops ask us to disperse after a couple of minutes, let's go get hot chocolate and plan...
2)
The BIG MOTHER OF ALL BLANKET FORTS! Here's the Guinness Book of World Records link to start a new category:
http://member.guinnessworldrecords.com/member/is_it_a_record.aspx
I confess: I see us partnering with someone with a dairy farm in Upstate New York. Oh wait... Or hey, make it a worldwide thing, see how many blanket forts can be made within 24 hours across the world! All ideas, please tweet them over to @violincatherine or post on the Facebook page, Evil Troy and Abed, OK?
Last week's pile of ideas. TL;DR, buy a bunch of Yoplait Yogurt, or donate General Mills food to a homeless shelter/food bank. Write handwritten, nice letters to Bob Greenblatt. Buy ALL THE MERCH; be like the Bieber Army. iTunes, DVDs, collectibles, hulu plus subscriptions. You can send itunes copies of episodes and hulu plus subscriptions as gifts to other people, too!
- @YoplaitYogurt, aka @YoplaitLove, has been very responsive to us on twitter. With the blessing of @EvilTroyAndAbed and @Greendale_Love, we're starting a two-pronged Save the Show campaign, taking inspiration from Chuck et al.
- 1) EITHER: Buy 7 Yoplait Yogurts a week, accompanied by in-store comment cards with the #savecommunity hashtag, plus tweets, FB postings (www.facebook.com/Yoplait), and letters sent mentioning @YoplaitYogurt, @YoplaitLove, and #savecommunity.
- 2) OR: Using the @GeneralMills (Yoplait parent company) brand website (www.generalmills.com/brands), reach out to local homeless shelters/women's shelters/food banks/orphanages, use your imagination, and offer to make a donation of food on behalf of General Mills and the #savecommunity campaign. Get your family/friends/coworkers involved; get other fans in your area to work with you to get higher dollar amounts involved. If you are in South Jersey or Philadelphia, please contact me; I will be happy to work with you, OK? The Chuck campaign had several good donation efforts, which I applaud, and this time of year is especially cold and brutal. Let's do this! General Mills mailing address/phone: 3007 Stephens Boulevard Joplin, MO 64804-3368, (417) 782-0300 (can address to Yoplait Yogurt, c/o General Mills, also)
- @SonyPictures, @Wired, and @Vudu recently ran a sweepstakes on behalf of @NBCcommunity. Sony, in particular, maybe has a vested interest in a fourth season for syndication. Any ideas on how to show the love to Sony, Wired, or Vudu are most welcome. I went to see Hugo (Sony Pictures movie in 3D) and would like to encourage everyone to see it. The movie is enchanting, uses 3D in stunning and unique ways, is (ironically) a full-out Marty Scorcese masterpiece, is a must-see for film history buffs, and is suitable for all ages.
- I am personally offering 20 (10 Twitter, 10 Facebook) iTunes copies of S3E10 of NBC's Community (Holiday Regional Music, a glorious musical episode) on a first come, first serve basis. You can send me a direct message on twitter at @violincatherine with your email address, or post it on my business FB page (http://on.fb.me/lOtMEZ). All are welcome, but please be honest and don't try to grab more than one copy, OK? This is coming from ME, as my heart-donation to the show and its fans.
- If you are dying to see the entire NBC Community series on Hulu plus, you can sign up for a free one-week trial here: http://www.hulu.com/plus?src=topnav. If you've never seen the show and would like a month to view it from the beginning, please contact me and I'll give you a free month. Only one available; first come, first serve!
- Legalese, legalese, blah blah blah. I don't know if the offers are good outside the US, but we can try, OK? iTunes shows are worth $1.99 apiece, and the month of Hulu plus is worth $7.99. I'm a big spender, I know! :) I LOVE the Justin Bieber Beliebers, buying out all the CDs in every city and giving them away to charity. Let's buy everything: merchandise, DVDs, itunes, Hulu. We can do this!
- VOTE! We've got 20 days to dominate BBT, OK? http://www.tv.com/features/best-of-2011 @EvilTroyAndAbed is on a personal quest here; who am I to say no? We're listed in several categories: Comedy/Underrated/Best of 2011/Guest Star (Josh Holloway)/Comedic Actor (Donald Glover)/Exciting Cast Addition (John Goodman). If I missed anything, tweet me and tell me.
Let's send letters to the CEO of NBC (Robert Greenblatt, c/o NBC Universal, 100 Universal City Plaza, Universal City CA 91608). Please handwrite them and make them nice. Please try not to whine or to mention other shows, OK? Many are suggesting sending felt goatees with all NBC correspondence. I prefer black construction paper, as it's easier to find/cheaper/easier to mail. Rough visual template of a goatee folded in half vertically:
http://twitpic.com/7rr0fu
Please show some love to the advertisers! We're tweeting them, and please find them on Facebook and on the web. This week is a good time to start writing letters (Greenblatt, advertisers, NBC executives).
UPDATE:
Ad Sponsors for 12/15/11 broadcast:
http://www.twitlonger.com/show/eodcik Courtesy @Greendale_Love
West Coast ad list (4 additional sponsors), 12/8/11:
http://bit.ly/rUGexa courtesy
@Anthonyjwu
(Also, @AnthonyJWu is finding tweet handles I missed:
@TargetRedCard,
@cutiescitrus,
@TinTinMovie,
@AskCapitalOne,
@. He is officially a Community Twitter God. I'll try to keep up with you, Mr. Wu!)
Current week's ad sponsor lists (Thursday, 12/8/11, Please use
@Kohls_Official for Kohl's, I made an error on the @violincatherine list. Thanks!): and and Courtesy @Greendale_Love and @SaveCommunity3
NOTE:
@YoplaitYogurt has been AMAZING on twitter (
http://twitpic.com/7omky7);
@OldNavy broadcast SEVERAL ads throughout the rest of the NBC schedule tonight, and I'm planning on making a
@PizzaHut video (a la Leonard) this week.
NBC executive mailing list:
http://bit.ly/ud34hU, courtesy @SaveCommunity3. I've got my stamps, how about you? I'm handwriting them, too, which is the current general advice.
Snail mail general list; ad sponsors:
http://savegreendale.com/?p=36#more-36
If anyone feels that another link is good to have here for reference, please tweet it to me at
@violincatherine.
Okay, so what do we do now? I had a massive amount of brainstorming last week; please scroll down to the next post if you'd like to see all those ideas.
1) Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas repeats next Thursday, 12/15 on NBC at 8pm. It's a beautiful episode, and I'll spread the word and tweet the advertisers like normal. Parks and Recreation AND Up All Night are getting my full support during the hiatus. I'm also treating Danny Pudi's appearance on Chuck, since it's ABED (but not really, I know), like a Community show.
2) I want NBC and Sony to find other ways to monetize the show:
- S3E10 Holiday Regional Music soundtrack on itunes. (@Greendale_Love and @JHeaton416)
- Sheet music sent out for paid digital download from S3E10
- Dean/Chang/Starburns/Magnitude/Leonard Christmas ornaments.
- DVD sales (also, can be used as prize incentive ANYWHERE for data mining).
- Greendale comic books.
- Sexy v-neck shirts from American Apparel, that my female friends would wear, with Greendale logos.
- Or give me iron-on patches and I'll make the shirts myself.
- Santa Annie costumes, STAT
- Hulu+ conversion from Netflix; incentives/contests/prizes
- 12 days of Greendale Christmas twitter contest, with trivia questions and prizes (NO cost to run twitter contest except your legal fees and website setup for data mining on splash page to enter, FYI)
- Action figures (I LOVE the set you already did for last Christmas, too)
- Coffee table book of the show, with full-color pictures and quotes. I WOULD BUY in a heartbeat.
- All-purpose joke book, divided by categories, from character's perspectives
- Anything about Chevy Chase, #pierceorchevy, or Pierce Hawthorne
- I would like to read Dean Pelton's novel, or see a Day in the Life as video/story
- ***tweet me at @violincatherine and I will include your idea on this list***
3) As fans, WE have collective powers. Keep talking about the show with your friends. We only had a couple of weeks to try to get viral awareness of the show. Both with friends and with mass media, we can bring people to the hulu website, show them DVDs, show them the brilliant cast stunts this week (College Humor:
http://bit.ly/tA2lBG, #PierceOrChevy:
http://bit.ly/rYf1fk), and show them clips on NBC or Hulu.
4) I like the idea of viral videos, crazy stunts, etc (see the next post for ideas). Would any of you like to do a Flash Mob at 30 Rock, crash the Today Show, or try to go ice skating near the tree as a group? Do you have ideas for some crazy stunt? Blanket Fort? Paintball War? If we make it goofy enough and film it, it's REALLY good for the show, too. It's up to us. If any of you can find a way to get the show and cast stunts into high-ranking newspapers, radio, and magazines, please send that email or make that call now.
5) I'm hoping NBC will see the hiatus the way Netflix saw Qwikster: reversible and stupid. If we can organize to help monetize, we can help with NBC's cash flow problem too. If we all donated $10 to a "Save the Show" campaign, we'd have $30-$100 million FAST. We could all get a Troy and Abed in the Morning sticker. I don't care how it's monetized, NBC and Sony. We'll buy whatever you're selling if you say it will save the show! Also, I'm aware that Sony may roll out a 4th season to give a full 88 episodes for syndication. Still, any way I can pitch in to make CERTAIN this happens is better than sitting idly by and worrying.
Yours,
Catherine
@violincatherine
(PS - This is a lovely summary of last night's show:
http://avc.lu/t599in)
