It is a truth universally acknowledged that a very meta TV comedy requires very meta marketing. And that’s why Tubi is taking so much pride in the ad campaign for its ad world satire, The Z-Suite.
Premiering Feb. 6, the show stars Lauren Graham as the head of a fictional advertising agency that gets into an all-too-real battle of the generations with her Gen-Z employees, led by social media expert Kriska (Madison Shamoun). Even as the show pokes fun at the characters and their various conflicts, its campaign, which was produced in collaboration with VaynerMedia and DDA, blurs the line between real and reel.
“We never break character,” enthuses Tubi CMO Nicole Parlapiano. “It’s been fun to embrace building a world around the show and not just doing the standard stuff.”
Arguably, the peak of Tubi’s Z-Suite world-building is a “hacky” Super Bowl spot that provides a pure blast of Gen-Z. But all of the elements from the three-phase campaign—from social media influencer posts to a LinkedIn capabilities deck—seek to replicate the show’s version of reality.
“There’s a lot of fertile ground when you blur the lines,” Gary Vaynerchuk, VaynerMedia’s CEO and an executive producer on The Z-Suite, says of that approach. “Whether we’re doing outdoor stuff or pop-up events, it’s important to break patterns.”
Here’s how Tubi designed the three phases of The Z-Suite’s pattern-breaking campaign.
Phase 1: The Pre-Game
Just like the Chiefs and the Eagles, Tubi spent the weeks ahead of the Big Game getting warmed up. “The first phase was just about getting people excited for the show,” Parlapiano says about the campaign’s early moves, which focused on “taking on the persona” of the Atelier Ad Agency, the fictional company Graham runs on The Z-Suite.
Part of the pre-release excitement came from a 30-second hype reel that showed prospective clients (aka viewers) what Atelier had to offer.
Atelier continued to make its presence felt via handles on all the major social media sites, from LinkedIn to TikTok. The social strategy also included a series of teasers that formed the Atelier Starter Pack.