​When most people hear the term “special ops,” they probably think of the elite military units sent on some of the Pentagon’s most challenging missions.

But at Fox, the term has taken on a new meaning when it comes to marketing and promotion: a group of in-house jacks-of-all-trades who have helped create some out-of-the-box campaigns and promotions to reach new audiences and engage viewers on multiple digital platforms.

“There isn’t a showrunner or producer who doesn’t ask what the Special Ops Team is—which is a nice way to stand out from the pack,” said Dean Norris, SVP of Marketing and Special Ops at Fox, during a special PromaxBDA webinar that explored the team’s creation and its approach to marketing.

Norris’ team consists of writers, producers, editors and other operations specialists who can create a project from top to bottom: they light, thet shoot, they edit, and the follow a spot through from beginning to end.

“Our business isn’t 20s, 30s, and 60s,” Norris told the webinar. “We’re storytellers. We entertain and market at the same time.”

The group, which officially sits in Fox’s publicity department, was born out of a desire to have an in-house infrastructure that would think like an agency, but keep costs low.

There is a flat reporting structure, and anyone can come in and pitch at any time.

Norris estimated that Special Ops puts out about seven to eight hours of content per month, which then gets served up to more than 50 sites and syndicated out.

Depending on the time of year, Special Ops also finds itself working with different “clients” within the Fox family. If it’s development season, they’ll be spending a lot of time with Programming. During the upfronts, they are supplying and conceptualizing things for Sales. And in the fall and spring they work very closely with Publicity.

“We think of ourselves as the ultimate fan,” Norris said. “We’re the brand managers for that show.”

Alex Hughes, VP of creative and strategy, said that one of the ways that the team tries to have someone following a show from early on in the process and getting to know folks around the set in order to build familiarity and rapport with talent.

“Talent is your biggest asset, especially when the shows aren’t really there,” Hughes said. “You can get a lot of mileage out of the cast.”

And when that rapport is built, Hughes said, you can really start to get creative.

“Shannon Woodward (“Raising Hope”) was already scheduled to do a photo shoot for the show, and we decided to tag along a do a little fun piece,” Hughes explained. “We had her drop F bombs throughout the shoot.”

Because of her good working relationship with the Special Ops team, Woodward later joked that she would have been insulted if they hadn’t asked her to participate in the irreverent idea.

“That rapport or trust can pay off down the road when you want to do something out of the box or creative and on-brand that doesn’t cost a lot of money, but gets a good return,” Hughes said.

And because so much content is put out by Fox’s social media channels, the team had Woodward distribute the video via her personal Twitter account, which gave the clip added credibility with fans.

The Special Ops team has also been working on news ways to recap shows for fans who are trying to catch up.

Ari Margolis, a Creative Manager on the Special Ops team, came up with a “Five in Five” concept that breaks down five episodes in five minutes (you can check out a cut for “Sleepy Hollow” above).

But with “The Following,” Margolis and the Special Ops team crafted a recap video campaign that took a more subtle marketing approach while appearing to be from the world of the show itself.

They created a series of videos called “Scene of the Crime” that mimicked a True Crime series you might see on TruTV and retold the story of the first season without appearing to be a traditional episode-by-episode recap.

“When we put something out we like to do subtle marketing,” Margolis said. “In the case of these pieces, the idea was someone had taped this show and uploaded these three little segments about the Winslow murders. At the end it fades to black and small bit of marketing comes up. It was a great way to recap the first season.”

The Special Ops group has its hands full these days, with a team on the ground in London shooting a Super Bowl spot for “24,” launching “The Following” this week, and having just launched the new season of “Idol” last week.

“Our batting average has gone way up and we are learning something new every day in the digital space,” Norris said.

Tags:


  Save as PDF