February 14, 2008
Light Bulbs and Eye Drops: FNL Fan Care Packages for NBC

In my previous post, I wrote about the fan campaign surrounding the effort to keep FNL on the air. With some further searching this afternoon, I've found a couple of other campaigns focusing on keeping this NBC drama on the air.

While the group I wrote about earlier are focusing on sending mini-footballs to the network, other groups are sending related household and health items related to the show.

Light Bulbs

But the Save Friday Night Lights campaign is far from the only group out there rallying for the show. There's also a campaign organized through VH1's Best Week Ever with the "Save Friday Night Lights" message, available in a wide variety of banners.

The show has a section of the site they are calling The Dillon Panthers Booster Club, which is dedicated to keeping the show on air. They are rallying for people to sign their petition (although that petition page is down at the time of this writing, it can be found if you scroll quite a ways down the "Dillon Panthers Booster Club" page.)

They are even calling for fans to send light bulbs to the network with "Lights On" written on them. They write, "Light bulbs are cheap, easy to come by, and if they break during shipping, the shattered glass might even seem vaguely threatening when NBC opens the package. Sort of like, "You try to take away our Panthers, and we might just cut you." This campaign to "keep the Lights on might not be one of the post office's favorites, but I'd be sure to mark the package as "fragile."

It might even be a good campaign to dovetail with the various green campaigns around switching light bulbs. Perhaps FNL fans could embrace this as an opportunity to switch to energy-saving bulbs?

Clear Eyes

Finally, I wanted to point out this Facebook group, with an administrator from Murray State University back home in Kentucky, called "CLEAR EYES, Full Hearts, Can't Cancel."

The administrators are calling for fans to send bottles of Clear Eyes to the network, along with a note voicing their displeasure at the idea of canceling Friday Night Lights. They write:

To show our displeasure with this decision, and to voice our opinion that FNL needs to be picked up on NBC for years to come, we are going to remind Mr. Silverman of the Dillon Panthers' team motto of "Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can't Lose" by HELPING him with his "Clear Eyes."

That's right, we're going to send this FNL hater bottles of the world's most popular eye lubricant and "redness relief," made popular by Ben Stein during years of commercials.

With any literature you include with your bottle of Clear Eyes for Mr. Silverman, please be thorough, yet respectful. While we need to show him and the rest of the network that we won't stand for the canceling of FNL, we also need to establish that we are an intelligent group of fans who know exactly what we're talking about.

There are 214 members of this group at the time I've posted this. Wait...215.

Conclusion

We've talked a lot in this past year here on the blog about engagement. In fact, going to our archive page and searching will bring back a plethora of posts on the subject. The question remains how to give greater value to that intensity, whether that be direct monetization or factoring in related values. For instance, I've written before about product placement and integration on Friday Night Lights and how the show's artistic incorporation of Applebee's and other brands seem much more effective than other types of advertising, both because of the creativity and natural nature of the placement, as well as because of the intense viewing experience FNL offers by creating such a rich and believable fictional world for the town.

Will the fan activity be enough to keep FNL alive? I guess time will tell...

Thoughts? E-mail me at samford@mit.edu.