Will the real Frasier Crane please stand up?
With Kelsey Grammer’s Frasier Crane originally appearing in Cheers before getting a self-titled, long-running spinoff, the character has a fandom and history already built into the Frasier revival on Paramount+, which brings Dr. Crane back to Boston.
So in marketing the new series, which debuted on Oct. 12, Paramount leaned into that fandom, highlighting Frasier-isms from the show, cueing in on clever, pun-filled marketing stunts and even creating an actual Frasier-themed crane in Beantown.
For Domenic DiMeglio, evp and chief marketing officer of Paramount Streaming, marketing Frasier’s new act came down to “building a campaign from the core fans and working our way out.”
“It really was a new chapter in his life going back to Boston, and so treating it as such,” DiMeglio said. “And then really making sure that when we brought this campaign to life, that we leaned into the things that made Frasier Crane… Frasier Crane.”
With research including everything from digging through the show’s history to performing deep dives on Reddit threads, the Paramount team focused on elements that would delight former fans and attract new audiences in the show’s TV marketing.
Show-related phrases, a.k.a. Frasier-isms, appeared in black-and-white line art on billboards in major cities such as New York and LA; events included Frasier screenings and trivia at Boston’s Cheers bar (which run on select Thursdays through Dec. 7); and food trucks in Boston paid homage to the iconic theme song, “Tossed Salads and Scrambled Eggs,” by giving out free tossed salads and scrambled eggs to fans while playing the theme.
Further leaning into the show returning to the character’s Boston roots, the whole city of Boston was invited to try the series with a free 30-day trial of Paramount+, which fans can find using the promo code CRANE here.
And, just as the original series title card created an iconic look at the Seattle skyline, the new series added to the Boston skyline with the Fraiser crane.
“We just had a lot of fun,” DiMeglio said. “We had a crane raise a line art, an image of Dr. Frasier Crane in Boston, and, voila, we had the Frasier crane.”
But cranes alone can’t do all the heavy lifting.