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Some of the best briefs start with “Hey…”
As in “Hey, we noticed Padma says ‘In my mouth’ a lot. Could you do something with that?” for Bravo’s Top Chef.
Or, “Hey, what if we got the agents in an elevator and they started fighting?” which led to this promo for Million Dollar Listing.
“These are all ideas that came out of a simple conversation,” said Quest Marks, vice president, on-air/video creative marketing at Bravo.
He, along with seven other speakers from WGN America, FX Networks and Hulu, discussed campaigns that broke the rules and veered from tradition in the PromaxBDA: The Conference session “Off-Brief: How to Be Wildly Successful by Giving Them What They Didn’t Ask For.”
Another idea that stemmed from “Hey…” was E!’s “Be Pop Cultured” campaign, created around the ask from one of the network’s departments that went: “Hey marketing, we need a new graphics package since we moved into a new studio.”
Instead, the E! looked at it as a super brief in terms of what the network could benefit from overall, and went beyond the ask to develop a meaningful multi-platform campaign, said Chris Donovan, SVP, creative marketing, E! Entertainment and Esquire Network.
They wound up developing not just a graphics package, but assets that included digital signage, a social strategy with a Snapchat Discovery takeover, video promos and more.
While these are examples of campaigns that took a simple suggestion to the next level, WGN America came together for a marketing challenge around a brief for an episode of Underground that completely diverted from the action-packed drama the slave series is known for.
The extended episode, “Minty” features Aisha Hinds as Harriet Tubman, and revolves around “one character speaking for 53 minutes in a dimly lit room with no B-roll,” said Brad Roe, vice president, creative, WGN America.
“In the end, we believed we had no choice but to embrace the episode,” he said. “Our marketing would have to be as bold as the episode itself.”
Their strategy was to develop a spot that built anticipation, and felt powerful and special without having to come out and tell viewers that it was. It features just one line of dialogue.
Underground also launched a social campaign reminiscent of a high-school history class.
“We pushed fact after fact related to Harriet’s speech,” said Danielle Mullin, senior director, social media, WGN America. “Fans actually loved this history lesson.”
The promo for the episode used a ‘less is more’ approach, and that’s something FX also did for its series Better Things, featuring Pamela Adlon as Sam Fox, an actress raising her three daughters while balancing the pressures of working in Hollywood and being a single parent.
Comedies about families are not exactly new, and FX didn’t want to fall into the creative trap of showing “a frazzled mom juggling life and kids and dirty dishes,” said Garrett Wagner, vice president of content and editorial.
Instead, the series promotes the painfully real, complex, and sometimes even mundane aspects of the show, which gives it an edgy tone.
“We decided, why don’t we show less,” Wagner said. “Let’s try to create a sense of curiosity about who this woman is. Let’s not make it so descriptive. We’ll let the audience fill in the blanks.”
Finally, for The Handmaid’s Tale, Hulu took to the streets with a 360 campaign that considered how to really make the marketing special regardless of return on investment, and tapped into the cultural conversation cropping up since last fall around political issues.
Hulu “went off-strategy by embracing the red” and leaned into the iconic elements of the show with a street theater activation featuring 30 women draped in the iconic red cloak, silently walking around the 2017 South By Southwest festival in Austin, Texas.
Based on its success, Hulu took the event on the road to New York City, Washington D.C., and soon, to Los Angeles.
Hulu also launched an interactive art installation on New York City’s High Line in the form of a 40-foot-by-12-foot mural that contained 4,000 complimentary paperback copies of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel on which the series is based. As passersby grabbed the books, the art piece was deconstructed to reveal powerful messages.
RELATED: Hulu’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Opens Interactive Art Exhibit on NYC’s High Line
The streaming service also partnered with clothing company Vaquera for a fashion show and clothing line inspired by the world of The Handmaid’s Tale.
And, Hulu broke tradition with a promo that aired during the male-dominated Super Bowl. The approach, said Yoshi Suzuki-Lahav, senior managing video producer, was to depict a “strong female voice in a female led series as a way to cut through the noise.”
In fact, all of these campaigns are examples of ways to cut through the noise. They embody what Wagner describes as ‘creative audacity,’ and demonstrate marketing that shines by “ditching what’s expected, risking failure and trying to do something new in the pursuit of something great.”
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