Nellie Andreeva

Warner Bros Television is putting social media front and center in its 2012 Emmy campaign. The TV studio is the first to incorporate social “memes” in the campaign for its series this year. If like me, you are not sure what meme is, it is a cultural item transmitted by repetition. WBTV has built its campaign around one of the most popular Internet memes, “Keep Calm”, derived from a little-known British government’s World War II–era “Keep Calm and Carry On” poster (on right), which was rediscovered in the 2000s. The slogan’s popularity has been growing, and it has became a staple of the cultural lexicon of 2012 via Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter and other forms of social media.

WBTV’s posters, which will be incorporated in the studio’s print and digital campaign and will be put on custom iPhone skins, keep the style of the original with a twist for each show, including “Keep calm and sing Soft Kitty” for The Big Bang Theory, “Keep calm and marry Molly” for Mike & Molly, “Keep calm and sing on” for The Voice. (For the most technology-savvy series, The Big Bang Theory, there is an extra “Keep Calm and Bazinga” iPad skin.)

TV Editor Nellie Andreeva - tip her here.