Love meets danger in CW Network’s new TV adaptation of Beauty and the Beast – as well as in Showcase‘s marketing for the show’s Canadian debut that aims to draw young female viewers to the science fiction-tinged romance.
The campaign’s strategic objective is “to showcase the attraction between the two young, sexy-looking protagonists,” said Muriel Solomon, senior director of marketing for Shaw Media‘s specialty channels (like Showcase).
“We did that by focusing creative around the rose and its thorns – the romantic and dangerous sides of love. We leveraged both the petals and the thorns in on-air and off-air.”
Showcase execs hope to replicate their previous audience successes with other supernatural sci-fi shows like Continuum and Lost Girl.
“The idea was to attract the broadest female audience possible – but with a younger female skew,” said Solomon.
The marketing campaign started early this summer with teasers that led to a serious OOH push ahead of the show’s Oct. 11 launch.
Showcase created video promos, including a music video-type execution with a remade version of Robert Palmer’s song “Addicted to Love.”
“We chose to use Florence and the Machine’s adapted version of the song because it’s appealing to a broad demographic,” said Solomon. “It resonates with an older demographic, but is still contemporary enough to attract a younger audience.”
On-air promotions have been intensifying over the weeks leading up to Thursday’s first broadcast, “when we’re taking over all of our Shaw Media specialty channels with promos,” said Solomon.
On-air promos and U.S. ad avails will help the campaign to go broad along with posters, billboards and print ads in the entertainment sections of commuter dailies across the country.
Off-air, large-scale executions will give the channel the opportunity to showcase the creative, including original tactics like rose petals strewn in transit shelters, combined with tangles of thorns wrapping around pillars.
The Beauty and the Beast social media campaign included a poster tease tweeted to Showcase’s Twitter followers along with Facebook and YouTube promotions.
The marketing will also be supported through Shaw collateral – envelope messaging, newsletters distributed to its subscriber base of 3.5 million subscribers, and messages piggy-backing on some of Shaw’s online and social media outlets.
“We expect Beauty and the Beast to be one of our top-ranking shows given the success we’ve had with other shows that also have strong female leads,” added Solomon.
Shaw Media’s in-house marketing team handled the creative for the campaign.
