Craig Ferguson is preparing for his jump from late night to early evening with this fall’s debut of “Celebrity Name Game,” which will be produced by FremantleMedia and Courteney Cox and David Arquette’s Coquette Productions and distributed by Debmar-Mercury.

To promote the show’s debut, Debmar-Mercury enlisted Lussier to help it craft a campaign and create promos. The show’s set isn’t quite ready and there’s no footage of actual game-play yet, so Lussier had to get creative.

“The challenge was to explain what the show is and how the game is played,” says Chris Stonich, president of Lussier. “Without setting Craig on a game-show set, that’s sometimes more difficult to get across than you might think.”

Fortunately, Ferguson’s quick on his feet, so putting him on the street and having him interact with passers-by (admittedly, some of them planted) was a no-brainer. Lussier shot spots on Hollywood Boulevard, in Los Feliz and in other locations around Los Angeles, and they turned out so well that some of them will later be used as bumpers and billboards in the show itself. (Editor’s note: This worked out so well that the show’s producers decided to take all of this footage to use in-show. None of it will be used as promos. Instead, the other spots described below will be used to promote the show this summer.)

“Craig’s ability to ad lib is like nothing I’ve ever seen,” says Adam Lewis, Debmar-Mercury’s vice president of marketing. “That’s really prepared him to do a show like this. You get ridiculous answers from people and he has a great ability to play off that.”

Debmar-Mercury, FremantleMedia and their station partners, such as Tribune and Sinclair, are betting that Ferguson’s comedy will help “Celebrity Name Game” take off much as “Family Feud” has with host Steve Harvey. Feud also is produced by FremantleMedia and distributed by Debmar-Mercury. Since Harvey took over in 2010, that show has grown from a sub-2.0 household rating to a 5.0 average, a feat that is rare not only in syndication but in television in general.

Like Harvey, “everything lends itself to comedy for Craig,” says Davis, which is why all the companies involved are so hopeful this new game show will succeed in the tough business of syndication. Next week, Debmar-Mercury will present the spots and the marketing plan to affiliates at PromaxBDA’s Station Summit at the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas.

Debmar-Mercury and Lussier have several other marketing phases in mind for “Celebrity Name Game” as well. Besides the man-on-the-street spots, Lussier also shot Ferguson walking forward through the empty set where the show will be produced, and used that footage to introduce the new game show, and Ferguson’s role as host of it.

Debmar-Mercury and Lussier also took further advantage of Ferguson’s improv ability and had him answer questions, such as how he feels about hosting a game show and what he thinks about celebrities. Those spots are referred to as “Craig On …” and are intended to help viewers get to know him a little bit better.

Later in the summer, once the set is finished and production is up and running, Lussier will shoot some on-set spots to make it really clear to viewers what the game is.

“We’ll have him on his set talking about the show or introducing himself and then we’ll intercut that with how the game is actually played,” said Stonich.

Ultimately, stations will receive spots that they can customize to their specific market, letting viewers know where and when they can find the show.

In the end, Stonich said, “we just want to make good, entertaining spots that will communicate the message.”

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