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When it came time to create a campaign for its latest original series, The Movies, CNN wanted to try something a little different.
Instead of handing the campaign over to a trusted vendor—in this case, Stun—it wanted to embed one of its own with the agency and see what came of it.
“The idea was interesting but terrifying,” said Stun Chief Creative Officer Michael Vamosy. “Did we really want to pull back the curtain and show how the sausage was made?”
Turns out, the experiment was less terrifying than productive and enlightening, members of both the CNN and Stun teams said during a session at Promax 2019 in Los Angeles.
The result was a robust campaign for the new series, which comes from Tom Hanks’ Playtone Pictures and Herzog & Co. Through interviews with celebrities, directors, critics and historians, the series highlights new stories and insights about history’s most important movies. The challenge was to create a promo that did not rely on movie clips to tell the story because licensing these clips is at best difficult and at worst impossible.
Instead, Stun and Creative turned to iconic symbols and images to tease viewers about the story the are telling about the most beloved and influential films from the dawn of cinema to present day.
CNN’s The Movies premieres in July.
CREDITS
Client: CNN
Chief Marketing Officer: Allison Gollust
Senior Vice President: Rick Lewchuk
Vice President & Group Creative Director: Whit Friese
Creative Director: Sean Houston
Senior Producer: Jeff Mielcarz
Marketing Director: Lara Hurst
Senior Director, Production: Dan Brown
Senior Graphic Designer: Brandon Campbell
Senior Production Manager: Nichole Goralnik
Agency: Stun
Principal, Stun: Mark Feldstein, Brad Roth
Chief Creative Officer, Stun: Michael Vamosy
SVP, Executive Creative Director, Stun: Sara Cahill
SVP, Executive Producer, Stun: Sharre Jacoby
Creative Director, Stun: Gilbert Avila
Senior Writer / Producer, Stun: Delara Adams
Senior Producer, Stun: Deb Presburger
Editor, Stun: Dayne Tanioka, Maggie Ramsey, Chad Early
Creative Director, Stun: Justin Owens
Art Director/Designer, Stun: Maziar Majd
Designer, Stun: Carol Park
Animator, Stun: Joe Lilli, Christian Argueta