At the beginning of the summer we introduced six very different ‘reality show contestants’ and this was the story of how their dream summer turned dark.

EMMA WILLIAMS - THE DITZY BLONDE

JUDE - THE INDIE KID

KIAN ODUYA - THE AVERAGE GUY

DIETER DAHL - THE YOGA HIPPY

TETE ROMERO - THE ROCK CHICK

CLAIRE FISHER - THE POP PRINCESS

We’ve got a few final twists and turns to uncover over the next week with the WKS contestant ‘Psych tests‘ which reveal just how Kian twisted and manipulated the rest of the gang along with why he was such a damaged individual in the first place.

As it was the real twist in the tail was Tete’s new (heroin addict) boyfriend Billy turning up bloated and very dead on a devon beach, a victim of Kian’s elaborate and deranged masterplan.

But where is Kian / David Hampton?

We’ve left the series on a cliff-hanger, but suffice to say there’s an even darker story to pick up next summer that continues the story of each character and has an even bigger and more ambitious concept.

For all of the stress, work and insane schedule (2 day turnaround from shoot to episode for most of the on the road festival drama including translation into 6 languages!) it’s been an incredible success.

Two years in the making for myself and co-creator/exec producer Harry Harrold, WKS09 very nearly didn’t happen. In fact it very didn’t nearly happen about ten times.

Now at the end of the series it has over 300k views for each of the 22 episodes, 22,000 facebook fans and was simultaneously syndicated across website, mini-player and mobile.

We met a few famous faces - well Jude sort of met Liam Gallagher - Dieter spoiled our wannable rockstar’s moment somewhat and Tete got a chance to get backstage with James from Glasvegas.

The whole reality show premise allowed us to make everything feel natural - rather than having wooden cameos from famous faces we could just have a WKS task for the contestants set up around autograph hunting which was then improvised. It was our constant get out of jail card.

It also feels like we’ve moved things on in terms of producing a TV quality drama that acts and behaves as the digital audience do - by producing a truly real time series against the backdrop a real summer’s festivals and gigs, it felt like we were always current, always topical and always relevant to the audience we were trying to reach.

If you were at Benicassim, Boardmasters, Soundwave in Croatia, Notting Hill Carnival, Global Gathering or The Secret Garden Party then you’d be able to watch the episode when you got home mud covered and hungover. A highlight of WKS was how brilliantly Bigballs Films (and director Gav Rowe) captured the live atmosphere at each event with a series of music video style festival films…

EUROPEAN ROADTRIP

BENICASSIM

GLOBAL GATHERING

BOARDMASTERS

SOUNDWAVE, CROATIA

We even had our very own soundtrack written for us by a Nathan ‘Flutebox’ Lee.

That’s been the great thing about WKS - there were no constraints on what we could or couldn’t do, we kind of just did what felt fun and interesting and different and Nathan’s tracks really gave the series a strong identity.

Along the way we’ve involved Facebook, Ebay, Wikipedia, Wordpress, Blogger, Myspace, Twitter, Flickr and Youtube but never as token elements, they’ve been truly integrated into the story and digital footprint and there’s always been a real reason to include them.

Facebook has been key and WKS? has been the first major multi-platform drama to play out on the social network - our characters all have profile pages which we can keep alive until next year and the ability to push content into our fans newsfeeds’ has been a real advantage over Myspace or Bebo. The ability to target our key demographic right down to location has also meant that those who do become fans are more likely to engage and enjoy the content.

We created ‘Fleabaying‘ - in the story Jude introduces a clever way to raise money for a drinks kitty ‘Fleabaying’ the other contestants prized possessions… well prized to them. Jude’s favourite All Saints jacket went up - bought by one of the WKS audience, and a key storyline revolves around Kian’s missing mix CD that appears on Ebay.

From the outset Jude was banging on about his band iBeatnik - for those who wanted to get Jude more we created a Myspace page for the band and had a song penned by members of the band Pull Tiger Tail. The song has been played nearly 50,000 times and gives us another area to create content for a spin-off series.

We used Wikipedia as a tool to add depth to the experience - curious WKS fans who googled David Hampton, the malevolent force at the heart of the drama would see the 2nd result was a Wikipedia entry. David Hampton was a notorious conman who tricked his way into the lives of Hollywood’s elite and was the inspiration for the play/film Six Degrees of Separation. Most famously David (who was mixed race like Kian) pretended to be Sidney Poiter’s son… all through the series we’ve dropped subtle clues leading the viewers to Kian starting with his audition tape. The final nail in the coffin being Kian’s psych test - when asked who his heroes were he says “Myself… or Sidney Poitier”.

The Back To Reality blog written by ‘David Hampton’ has been one of the major successes of the project - creating a site seemingly out of the WKS universe with vile and vicious content covering celeb culture, fame seekers and the contestants and producers of reality tv. It allowed us to talk about things other than WKS - shows like Big Brother, X Factor and The Hills as well as latest gossip and news, to build a believable and topical Perez Hilton style blog and to give us a platform to bring WKS content from a new part of the web and a depth to Kian/David Hampton’s loathing of this genre.

The final three weeks of WKS saw us dial up the Back To Reality blog, increasing its influence over characters and the story - seeding his blogs and revelations within the main episodes and b roll and then sharing them with our Facebook audience who quickly latched onto David Hampton’s darkly comic and twisted character assassinations, sparking conversation and debate.

It was great that the series evolved organically as we’d intended - the digital strategy activated by Tom Thirlwall and the gang at M Works allowed us to really build a devoted audience without resorting to force-feeding them content or ramming brand messages down their throats.

Of course it was clear that Vodafone were the brand at the heart of the show, but at no point did WKS feel like ‘branded content’ designed to sell a price-plan or shift handsets.

We now have 22,000 Facebook fans, 22,000 16-30 year olds from across Europe who all came to WKS - 62% of our traffic came through channels where there had been a media spend by Vodafone, meaning 38% of all our fans and views came from outside, from people who had found WKS, shared it, commented on it and recommended it to friends.

We had no big PR campaign, TV tie in or push, we had to rely on the story, content, three series highlights films updating the audience and the WKS world being interesting enough to hook a notoriously fickle audience and in that respect I think we’ve really delivered.

FIRST SHOW DRIVER

MID SEASON CATCH-UP

FINAL WEEK TRAILER

It’s been hard work to get those people there, so now its up to us to keep them engaged, to keep them entertained and to keep them hooked. If we can do that then we start to build a real community that keep coming back for more.

Roll on WKS10. Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger.

There should also be some exciting news about our other big project in the next few months so stay tuned.

It might be sampling Tony Hawk’s skateboard in LA, a samba band in Rio or recording a stripped down acoustic on a deserted beach in Ibiza.

The Bebo users get exclusive access to this madcap ten week odyssey and also get to download a new single each week.
But that’s enough waffle - check them out here.