Heroes100: A Q&A with Peter Llewellyn, Campaign Instigator

On saturday Feb 6th 2010, a #SaveHeroes twitter campaign became successful when it went on to be one of the top 10 most trended topics worldwide due to the efforts of Mastermind Peter Llewellyn and the love and dedication of hundreds of Heroes fans on twitter.

Another such campaign has been set for March 6th 2010 and in order to raise awareness, the InsideTrekker has conducted a Q&A with the campaign's instigator.

Pete lets start at the beginning, SaveHeroes/SaveHeroesSaturday, that was a success!

PL Thanks Nat, yes it was an amazing achievement, the Heroes fans were giants that day they really came through when it mattered.

Were you surprised at that?

PL Well I always thought we could get saveheroes to trend but I didn't think it would be so hard! The Heroes fans really do punch above their weight!

So Why not do another saveheroes campaign?

PL: Well Nat It crossed my mind, but saveheroes was reactionary, we reacted to the shock news that Heroes might be cancelled and it was an ad-hock campaign, it really just fell into place at the right time.

What do you mean by that?

PL: Nat The campaign pretty much happened by itself after seeing the Less than Four blog on the 12th January, I wrote my letter & signed the petitions but I thought is this it? Is this all I can do? I said to Sheindie what are Sarmy doing? She replied "What are YOU doing!?'' The answer came quickly as I got on twitter people were tweeting the petition they wanted to be heard, the idea of a campaign came then.

How did you set up the campaign?

PL: I was tweeting save #Heroes as two words but I realised that only the heroes was showing up in a search so I put them together & bingo! SaveHeroes was born! I then started to add saveheroes to my tweets & people copied it!

So how did it get to be a campaign?

PL: Well Nat, I was having a chat with Sara Schaller & I said we need to get more people to tweet this preferably at the same time to get it noticed! I realised that by putting it in as a search & saving it I could ReTweet abt 20-25 tweets at a time & I thought if 20 or 30 people did that then it would be 750 tweets per minute!

So why did you choose February 6th to do the first campaign?

PL: Well I had the conversation with Sara on the 27th January. Initially I was going to do the campaign on the 9th Feb the day after the last episode of Heroes was screened but I thought that by having it before it might encourage people to watch the last episode, so we decided that Saturday Feb 6 was best! It just seemed so right SaveheroesSaturday the 6th!

And we now know it Trended worldwide!

PL: Indeed it did Nat, but it was much, much harder than I thought, but when it got on the TT list the tweets went crazy! It was a beautiful thing to see!

And yet you don't want to repeat it?

PL: Quite right Nat, the saveheroes campaign did its job we all learned lessons from it but I think it was a one shot deal. I thought about doing it again but an interview I heard on the radio by Ricky Gervais gave me the inspiration to set a goal for Heroes.

Tell me more..

PL: Well He said that when a show gets 100 episodes in the USA it gets syndicated & all the networks can carry the show & repeat it on & off every 6 months etc, So I thought Yup that's what is needed for Heroes.

Hence the Heroes100?

PL: Exactly Nat, It's catchy you can play with words around it for instance Heroes100 -100% heroes! & its a goal for us to achieve, why settle for a lame few episodes to finish Heroes off when we want the show to continue?

But the ratings have been poor for Heroes

PL: Yes Nat there's no getting away from that, but I think if the shows creators bring in some new sexy young actors & get back to the shows original ethos of ordinary people doing extraordinary things then we'll be on the right track!

So do you think Heroes100 will work as a concept?

PL: Yes Nat I think its captured the fans imagination, there are about 29 Heroes100 accounts set up on Twitter in the last couple of days, people are talking about it, they are hungry for Heroes they love the show, we all do!

Where do you see Heroes100 going then?

PL:Well the sky is the limit, this time round everyone wants to help, Lucy Baker has designed the Twibbon & Is doing posters, Sara Schaller has been amazing at spreading the word.. it was her idea to have Heroes100Saturday on the 6th March, exactly 1 month after SaveHeroes, we need to build a Mega- Campaign that will Trend big on Twitter, and we can encourage the letter writing to NBC, we can have more petitions as a movement Heroes100 will have a loud voice on Twitter and FaceBook So at least the fans will be heard.

So how are you going to run this campaign?

PL: Nat this time around I know we need to get loads more tweets, so I've been asking people to get Heroes100 twitter accounts, the reason being so many people went into twitterjail last time so we need to avoid that problem, but also importantly some people were worried about spamming their followers, this alleviates that problem! With a Heroes100 twitter account you can just follow the people who want to help us and will relish being spammed to! We will also be tweeting the virtues of buying a legal download of Heroes and buying the box sets etc! The main thing we will do is spam @NBC so they receive thousands of tweets WE WILL BE HEARD!

And if NBC give us another season?

PL: WE promise to plug Heroes big time, we will have a huge campaign to get more people to watch the show, Heroes can recover it just needs the true fans behind it supporting it.

Well thanks Pete for explaining that to us good luck with your endeavour!

PL: Thank you for giving me the chance to explain about Heroes100 and Heroes100Saturday 6th March.

Save Heroes, Save the World!!

Today is the last Heroes episode of the season.

I hope it's not the last Heroes episode ever.

Despite the fact that Heroes's ratings are not what they used to be, the show continues to be the most downloaded and streamed out there, clearly indicating that people still love it and want to see it. Overseas transmission and DVD sales are also big money makers for NBC.

But today, we are worried that our beloved show wont come back.

We all know that NBC has done a lousy job at promoting Heroes, and we all know that something's not right with their decision making lately (the horrible Jay Leno Hour at 10pm anyone - cancelled thank GOD but is it too late to repair the dammage?). They also almost cancelled Chuck for Pete's sake! The fact that our beloved show is in the hands of a clearly incompetent network is scary but I keep hoping that they will see the light and at least renew it for a fifth season, even if it's the final one, so that the story can be wrapped up properly.

This past season has been better than seasons 2 or 3 but it still had it's problems. They killed a beloved character (Nathan) for good, and it seems the actor was not treated correctly by the network (or producers - details are very sketchy). We barely saw Mohinder and Tracy, Sylar has embarked on another redemption ark and Claire still annoys me but she was less so this season. New characters were added then dropped, the Carnival was a good idea at first but I feel it may have gone nowhere and Samuel took his sweet time to become a big bad. However, the writers have done their best to be more consistent in their writing, which was refreshing, and I salute their efforts. Even dialogues were more meaningful this season.

This past saturday, die hard fans of Heroes banded together on twitter to make #SaveHeroes a worldwide trend in order to show our love and support for the show. And it worked. I just hope that NBC saw that and that they will have the good sense to respect us and keep the show on for at least another year.

Today, I hope the fans will join me on twitter in hashtagging Heroes and SaveHeroes in support of our show.

Help Us Save Heroes!!!