FX Networks has been named PromaxBDA’s In-House Marketing Team of the Year. The announcement came Thursday evening at the annual PromaxBDA Promotion, Marketing and Design Awards Show.

“We know that this consumes our very existence but to other people, it’s a gnat on a windshield in a place they may never drive,” said Stephanie Gibbons, president of marketing, digital media marketing and on-air promotions for FX Networks, when interviewed about the award. “If we actually have a chance to make contact we want what hits your windshield to be bigger than a deer and to pull you off the side of the road and make you experience a different kind of consciousness.”

Under Gibbons’ leadership, FX Networks has now been honored with the award for five consecutive years, beginning in 2011.

It’s an amazing streak that serves as a testament not only to the effectiveness of her team’s campaigns – which in the past year alone include launching the most watched telecast in FX history (the Season 4 premiere of American Horror Story) and marketing a Simpsons marathon that rejuvenated the fledgling FXX network – but to the quality of its creative output.

Time and again, FX Networks unveils promos that go beyond distilling its programming brands into compelling anthems, but play like beautifully self-contained, miniature works of art. As evidenced by this stirring, NASA-spoofing, “Blaze of Glory” spot for the Season 10 premiere of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia on FXX.

“There’s a cult to Sunny and the cool thing about a spot like this is, when you have a brand that has that longevity and heredity to it, you are able to walk through that crowd and plant all of those moments of memory and fanaticism and everything from the occult to the idiotic and you are able to celebrate that with some really insidious nods,” said Gibbons, speaking with Brief by phone from a mysterious conference room, where her team was planning its next campaign. “There’s something incredibly brave about NASA and there’s something incredibly freaky and odd about a group of people who get together to watch that. It’s like Sunny [itself] – the brave edge of technology and idiocy, and together they create something beyond the realm of reason.”

Feats of verbal gymnastics like the above, which tumbles and flips through alternating elegant and hilarious descriptions to land on an almost poetic summation of the Sunny brand, flow freely from Gibbons in conversation, as though her mind is so full of ideas, the slightest jostle triggers an avalanche, which proceeds to roll itself into a perfectly formed snowball. It’s a style that seems to have defined the core of her team’s work dynamic, or vice-versa.

“I like to call it organized chaos,” said John Varvi, SVP of on-air promotion at FX Networks, who joined Gibbons on the call. Also in attendance were Kenna McCabe, SVP of production and special projects, and Sally Daws, SVP of marketing and digital media marketing.

The spirited conversation offered a tantalizing glimpse into what it might be like to work on FX’s marketing team, as the discussion pin-balled between insightful assessments of recent works, quotes from Robert Frost offered up by McCabe (“No way out but through”) and perhaps most tellingly, lots and lots of laughter.

“This is kind of part of our chemistry, what you’re hearing, as goofy as it is” offered Daws at one point. “We have fun together… And, we have Oompa Loompas.”

Added Gibbons: “I don’t think we have a secret sauce, I think we have people and we have an alchemic connection… We move like a huge hive. And it’s not convenient and it’s not streamlined and it’s not easy and it’s not elegant.”

But somehow it coheres into spots like this epic promo that came out in advance of FXX’s groundbreaking Simpsons marathon event:

The genius of that spot is that it’s somehow both the darkest extreme of the Simpsons worldview and also a stirring call to arms.

“It was an apocalyptic vision through a comedic lens,” said Gibbons. “When you consider how powerful of a brand The Simpsons is and how that brand has not only reflected society but helped to define it – we worked to death to take that on and to stand in the shadow of all the creators themselves and all of the marketers that have touched that brand, and we felt that we were walking into a temple that was hallowed but could potentially be the temple of doom… Everyone who was on [the spot] got that this brand was part of society. It was Warhol-ian in impact, and so we wanted to be worthy and that’s how we positioned it to ourselves and to everyone who worked on it.”

Vital post-production and editorial contributions on the spot were provided by mOcean, who perhaps not coincidentally happens to be this year’s recipient of PromaxBDA’s Out-of-House Agency of the Year honor. mOcean is part of a long list of external FX marketing partners (provided at the end of this post) whom Gibbons is quick to credit, describing them collectively, with typical flair, as “part of us. It’s like this cell wall opens and cocoons this other cell and becomes a zygote and then travels down a tube which exits through some other nodule and then bakes in the sun for a while and we have no idea it’s mayonnaise on the back porch and then we go, ‘oh my god it’s clear, that’s awesome, here we go.”

That melding of inner and outer minds at the cellular level can produce campaign elements that cohere like a complete ecosystem. For Season 1 of Fargo, for instance, FX released a medley of key art, eerily still promos and even behind-the-scenes videos that not only recalled the cryptic vibe of the Coen Brothers’ source material but evoked the essence of the town itself.

“We really wanted people to see what the atmosphere and what the sensibility exists in its pure form that we’re channeling,” Gibbons told Brief, back when the campaign was still in full swing “It’s almost like you come to this landscape as strangers in a foreign land.”

No landscape within FX’s programming universe has more atmosphere than American Horror Story. Brief has written entire screeds about the art of crafting creepy promos that live up to the imagination of show creator Ryan Murphy, which runs the gamut “from serious gravitas to the hyperbolically, bombastically, thrillingly, perversely profound,” said Gibbons. “He can take tropes, both visual and narrative, and twist them through a modern lens and that’s a marketer’s dream. To be able to take iconic images and storytelling that are part of our brain stems and bring them into the moment. As a marketer, Ryan Murphy provides you everything on a platter. He just brings you everything you need and then you’re essentially bathed in chocolate, powdered with sugar and then baked to a perfect crispy crust… What’s scary is, if you can’t make it work with him, you definitely question your liability as a human.”

In the end, of course, any network’s marketing is only as great as the product it services, and Gibbons was effusive in saluting the driving force behind FX’s incredible run of offerings.

“All good quite literally flows from our beloved leader, John Landgraf,” she told Brief. “His brain is my favorite place to visit. He is our Zen compass – half the helix, sage warrior, the other raw artist. He’s my idol – it’s definitely big time worship on my end. He makes all things possible.”

FX NETWORKS’ EXTERNAL VENDORS

Anatomy

And Company

Arsonal

Awesome

BBDG

Block & Tackle

BLT

Buster

Cold Open

Create

Feel Good Anyway

Firefly

Iconisis

Ignition

Imaginary Forces

Impactist

Laundry

Loud Whisper

Man vs. Machine

Method

mOcean

P+A

Pilot

Play Creative

Prodigal Pictures

Roger

Slaqr

Social Studios

Spittn Image

Stun

The Mill

The Refinery

Trailer Park

Troika

Victor House

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