Stornoway Communications is experimenting in the digital-to-TV realm with a new series focusing on what makes cool, cool.

With season one of its new web series Where Cool Came From, produced by its sister company Stornoway Productions, recently posted online, production on season two is already underway, underlining the channel’s confidence in the series’ success.

Where Cool Came From looks at objects from modern culture, such as vinyl records or tattoos, and follows the story of how these particular items or trends were deemed “cool.” In addition to season one’s web episodes, which are available on a website dedicated to the series, a one-hour television special The Atomic Roadtrip: In Search of a Lost Decade will air this fall or winter on ichannel. Season two will also feature a television component, a documentary titled The Language of Cool, which will go into production next year.

“As audiences begin to watch more content on more devices, it made sense for ichannel to offer programming on various platforms,” Victoria Fusca, VP, program acquisitions and business affairs of Stornaway Communications told Playback Daily. 

With the entirety of the first season currently online, the production team behind Where Cool Came From will be ramping up marketing efforts to drive viewers to season one and build up buzz for season two, said Leah Cameron, story editor, writer and associate producer on the series.

For season one, the producers promoted the series to niche groups who might have interests in the topics the series covers via Google Ad buys, posts to niche-specific blogs and using topic-specific hashtags on Twitter and Instagram, explained Cameron.

“We will be focusing our efforts over the upcoming weeks on driving viewers to our website to view season one and will start to prep viewers for season two in the new year by continuing to push new episodes with teasers, blog posts and sneak peeks posted to Facebook and topic-specific blogs,” Cameron told Playback Daily.

The campaign will also offer viewers behind-the-scenes teasers on Instagram and Facebook. Future episodes of the series may also be posted to YouTube as part of marketing efforts for season two. The first block of episodes for season two were shot on the road in Chicago and Detroit, with remaining episodes to be shot in Toronto and various locations in Ontario.

The series was financed by licence fees from ichannel, and from the Canada Media Fund’s Convergent Digital Media Incentive. The series is hosted by Dave LeBlanc (pictured, far left) and directed by Robert Fantinatto (pictured, far right).