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Combining Social Media with TV can deliver fantastic results. A great example is Channel 4 recent campaigning series, Hugh’s Fish Fight, which successfully integrated a social element into all of its content and built a community around the programmes.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall backed by a host of other celebrity chefs including Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsay, tapped into the politics of food to champion sustainable fishing practices and to seek changes to Europe’s Common Fisheries Policy. Key to the campaign is the call for people to diversify their fish-eating habits and to help raise support for changes to the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) to protect fish stocks and tackle unnecessary discarding of certain specifies of caught fish.

The TV programmes were backed by a campaign website and active social media platforms including Facebook Hugh’s Fish Fight and Twitter Hugh’s Fish Fight. A key feature of the site was the option for users to sign-up to the campaign to write directly to policy makers in the EU. Half a million people have signed up so far which suggests that it’s been a resounding success.

Take a peek at some of the other metrics and highlights from the week of broadcast:

Fishfight.net

1 million page impressions clocked between 8-11pm on night of TX3 (14 Jan)

Over 500,000 sign-ups to the e-petition

Facebook Hugh’s Fish Fight

Hugh’s Fish Fight: 181,000 people liked this page

Channel 4′s Big Fish Fight: 22,000 people liked this page

Twitter Hugh’s Fish Fight

Fish Fight trended daily throughout TX, was a ‘Top tweet’ several times and received support from Jamie Oliver, Stephen Fry, Coldplay, Raymond Blanc, Jay Rayner and Dermot O’Leary.

Blog post by Nick O’Meally. Thanks to Calabash Films’ cross platform consultant Joanna Haslam for her input.

Joanna Haslam is a freelance Digital Producer currently at Keo Digital. She oversaw the creation of fishfight.net and runs the digital element of Hugh’s Fish Fight campaign, part of Channel 4′s Big Fish Fight season.