Pre-launch Campaign
RTL
Team — 20+ of UX/Visual Designers, Strategists, Developers, Project Managers from AKQA and RTL
Backgournd
RTL aimed to unify its fragmented media brands under RTL+. This campaign served as a preview phase before the full app release, focused on showcasing RTL’s new brand mission with curated, high-quality content and limited features.
Goal
Introduce RTL’s new unified platform and brain mission “Come Together”
Key Objectives:
Guiding Principles
Reframing the Design Problems
Based on RTL’s brand mission and our guiding principles, I analyzed behavioral patterns and industry gaps to frame two key UX problems that would shape the direction of our campaign concepts.
1. How can we make content feel more inspiring?
Can content feel personal and socially relevant?What I found:
Why it matters:
Approach:
2. How can RTL+ become the place where people connect through content?
How can platform features reflect the way people engage socially around what they watch?What I found:
Why it matters:
Approach:
1. Bring in cultural moments to content recommendation
I proposed a content recommendation strategy grounded in cultural moments people are living through from seasonal events to shared social moments.How it ties to our goal & mission:
2. Couch Party
A shared watching feature that lets users invite friends and react together in real time even when apart. Inspired by the isolation of the pandemic, this concept reimagines the living room as a virtual space where people can laugh, comment, and feel connected, no matter the distance.How it ties to our goal & mission:
I explored synced interaction between TV and mobile including real-time and post-watch reactions.
We chose a mobile-first approach due to time and technical constratins and to support a lean back TV experience with better control on mobile
3. Virtual Livingroom
A community space where users connect through shared interests, beyond their personal circle.By creating or joining groups, they can share reations, stay engaged, and feel part of something bigger.
How it ties to our goal & mission:
APPetizer - A Celebratory Moment of Coming Together
APPetizer creates a celebratory lead-up to the RTL+ launch by offering free, exclusive (Freemium) content to TVNow users during a limited teaser phase.This initiative drives early BETA app sign-ups and encourages community engagement thorugh RTL’s premium content. It helps users become familiar with the service and builds mementum for full membership at launch.
Every week, we highlight a cultural moment through curated contetn from Christopher Stree Day to the Donation Marathon to Christmas.With one recommendation per week across RTL channels, we created 52 moments a year to spark connection and keep users engaged over time.
Couch party lets users watch shows together and share reactions in real time, or anytime.Reactions are synced with time stamp to specific moments in the show, so users can revisit content later and still see where friends reacted or what they responed to.
The feature add social connection to the RTL+ experience and helps expand the user base through seamless invitation and shared moments.
Users can join or create community groups based on shared interest, turning content into a space for exploration, expression, and connection.If extended further, I would focus on translating these socially driven concepts into scalable, technically feasible features through early collaboration with product and engineering. I also see potential in evolving the content strategy into a personalized, data-informed system to sustain engagement beyond the initial rollout.
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