Who is Will Traveler?
I don’t know, and apparently Facebook (or someone) doesn’t want you to know either.
Last week, I wrote a blog post about how I found myself briefly running the social media marketing campaign for ABC TV’s new show, Traveler.
As you may recall, after watching the first episode of the series, I realized that ABC and the producers of the show had completely missed the social media boat. I logged in to Facebook to search for "Will Traveler," the missing character at the core of the show, and found nothing. Not even a basic Facebook profile. Talk about a lost opportunity.
So I did what should have been done in the first place. On May 31, 2007, I created a Facebook profile for Will Traveler.
I tried to make the profile as realistic and as ‘in character’ as possible, based on the facts I was able to gather from the show. I identified the school he apparently attended. I listed his interests (electronics, politics) and favourite movies (The Manchurian Candidate, The Conversation). I even cited a quote from Jack Kerouac, one of the character’s favourite authors, and had Will join a Jack Kerouac Facebook group.
I was particularly proud of the photo I chose for Will; I thought it was suitably ambiguous and mysterious:
In other words, I created a Facebook profile for Will Traveler that fans of the show would instantly identify as his.
The next day, June 1, I began finding friends for Will. I started with me (Bill Sweetman) and my colleague Collin Douma (of Radical Trust fame). I had let Collin in on my little experiment, and he was all in favour of it.
Since there were already a half-dozen or so ‘unofficial’ Facebook groups devoted to the TV show (created by fans of the show), I had Will add the creators of those groups as his Facebook friends.
By June 4th, Will Traveler had a growing collection of Facebook friends and was starting to get unsolicited Friend requests and messages from fans of the TV show.
Clearly I was on to something. And fans of the show were having fun.
