SNL50: a social campaign breakdown

For 50 years, SNL has given us more cowbell and vans down by the river on Saturday nights. As they celebrated this milestone anniversary all season, social media activations honored their legacy every step of the way.

Here's a look at the social tactics and insights supported by their posts and profiles the past 6 months leading up to the Homecoming Concert and SNL50 Anniversary Special.

The Long Game

SNL launched its SNL50 campaign 6 months ago at the start of the 50th season with an announcement, a rebrand of key profile assets, and consistent weekly visual reminders with host posts.?

SNL 50th Season Announcement

The One-off Game

SNL periodically released one-off activations to boost awareness and sustain engagement, such as paid ads, a character bracket on Twitter where fans voted on their favorite, and a TikTok influencer activation.

SNL Twitter Character Voting Bracket

SNL 50 Influencer Activations ??

The UGC Game

SNL generated and reshared UGC by setting up a SNL50 social component at Rockefeller Center where fans were encouraged to post pictures from their visit to Live from New York: The SNL Experience.?

The Countdown Game

Leading up to the 50th Anniversary special, they executed a 50 day countdown on Instagram with video montages of favorite sketches from each season since the start.?

Season 50

Season 25

Season 1

The Live Game

SNL treated their anniversary special weekend like an awards show (complete with a red carpet) with dozens of real time content releases throughout both the concert and 3 hour special.?

The Homecoming Concert

The Red Carpet

The SNL 50th Anniversary Special

Social Listening Insights

Big picture, the SNL 50th Anniversary Special was absolutely off the charts when it comes to SNL conversations and engagement on social.

For comparison, here's the engagement comparison of an individual season episode and the 3 hour special.

In terms of former cast and hosts, Andy Samberg, Eddie Murphy, Paul Simon, and Steve Martin generated the most conversations throughout the Special.

Additionally, Tom Hanks (negative sentiment) and Pedro Pascal /Sabrina Carpenter's (positive sentiment) sketches were the most talked about sketches across the three hours.

With 900k likes, Miley Cyrus's Instagram post was the single most engaged with piece of content from SNL50 (followed closely by Sabrina Carpenter's 829k post with Paul Simon) emphasizing how impactful celebrity organic content can be toward campaigns.

Key Takeaways

? Social Team Flexibility: a campaign like SNL50 requires a Social Team who is able to flex a vast array of "social muscles" between ongoing campaigns, one-off activations, and live social content. All require different skill sets and to pull off every single one with excellence is an impressive feat.

? Nostalgia is powerful: people have loved SNL for decades. Tapping into classic sketches and beloved hosts/cast members every step of the way greatly impacted the campaign's success.

? Multi-Channel Uniqueness: SNL did a wonderful job contextualizing their campaign for each social channel. There was some "copy+pasting" of content across channels, but the high majority was molded take advantage of opportunities each channel presented.

? Tools make a difference: A campaign like this does not happen without an incredible and organized asset library and streamlined approval processes. These may seem like mundane elements of social media management, but without incredibly efficient solutions for both, this success does not happen.

*Social Listening data from Sprout Social on SNL conversations Jan 17-Feb 19, 2025 on YouTube, X, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Tumblr, & portions of the web