Shark Week celebrated its 33rd year in 2021, and Discovery’s affiliate marketing team found a way to once again deliver a big bite via numerous multi-platform, multi-affiliate promotional marketing campaigns. Initiatives were customized to provide each affiliate with what it most needed. The team worked with Comcast to curate Shark Week within the X1 platform, making it an on-demand destination, screensaver and custom voice command. To build employee engagement, Discovery hosted a Shark Week virtual employee screening event. The affiliate marketing team created custom shark memes and zodiac signs for Hulu that the streamer’s users could share and interact with on Hulu’s social pages. For Cox, Shark Week received premier STB/VOD placement that included a Shark Week trivia game within Contour’s interactive game hub. Discovery created a custom Shark Week summer prize pack promotion for Verizon Fios that included a discovery+ special offer for the Verizon Up rewards program. In exchange for the giveaway, Verizon supported Shark Week with tune-in cross-channel spots on air. The list goes on and on, proving that successful affiliate marketing campaigns do not take a one-size-fits-all approach. The campaigns garnered 97 million impressions, generating unprecedented ROI for Discovery Channel. Shark Week 2021 delivered record ratings, claiming the #1 cable network in primetime during Shark Week among P/M25-54, P/M18-49, and P/M18-34 (excluding sports programming).