Cutting-edge, robotic, animal spies infiltrate the wild again in Sony BBC Earth’s premiere ‘Spy in the Wild 2’

Cutting-edge, robotic, animal spies infiltrate the wild again in Sony BBC Earth’s premiere ‘Spy in the Wild 2’

Marketing innovations include the launch of a fun and experiential AR filter

Sony BBC Earth

Nature's spies are back undercover and this time, their mission is to go deeper into the animal world than ever thought possible. Spy in the Wild revolutionized wildlife filmmaking with the use of cutting edge technology and now with Season 2, the makers have set new benchmarks as they placed more than 50 realistic animatronic spy creatures across the globe, taking the viewers into the heart of the extraordinary lives of 40 remarkable and real wild animals. Premiering on Sony BBC Earth on 21st September with Lenovo as the Associate Sponsor, ‘Spy in the Wild 2’ will air in English, Hindi, Tamil and Telugu, from Monday to Friday at 9PM.

Each spy creature looks like the real animals it films and behaves like them too, giving us an intimate sneak peek into the unseen world of animal behavior and gatherings. Accepted by animal families, these robotic lookalikes film from an insider’s perspective gaining revelatory insights into their worlds as they feed, breed and fight. In Season 2, the spy cams not only take to air, ground and underwater but also go beyond animals and infiltrate the wild via objects, allowing a spy turtle to lay robot eggs, a spy squirrel to gather robot nuts, monkeys to play with a spy snowball and more.

To ensure a wider reach for this pioneering series, Sony BBC Earth deployed a strong on-air and digital campaign. To begin with, an innovative and engaging AR filter was launched on Facebook and Instagram to bring alive the essence of the series - the robotic animals with an eye of the spy. The filter incorporates this ‘eye of the spy’ coupled with upbeat audio cues, making this filter not only strikingly different but also a lot of fun.

Additionally, the channel on boarded popular Bollywood actor – Varun Sharma, who with his inimitable humor and quirk is promoting the series digitally via specially curated promos. The eccentric and light-hearted promos reveal that a couple of undercover spy animals have taken over Varun’s life and are exposing his intimate moments hence driving the message – ‘with spies up close, all the drama will be exposed’.

For on-air promotions, viewers will get to be a part of an amusing and engaging campaign, ‘Spot the Spy’. Since the realistic appearance of the spies make it difficult to differentiate them from the real animals, the on-air contest will revolve around spotting the spy in the wild. There will be a different spy animal appearing on the TV screen daily, for 5 days and first 5 viewers - who spot the spy, click a picture of the spy on the TV screen and send it to @sonybbcearth using #SpotTheSpy on Facebook - will win exciting gifts every day. Sony BBC Earth’s social media pages will be used extensively to promote and popularize the campaign and drive people to the channel.