Earth to Alien fans, there’s another entry in the franchise, and FX wants to make it the most immersive experience possible.
Today, FX and Hulu debuted the Alien prequel series, Alien: Earth, which takes place two years before the original 1979 film. Leading up to its premiere, FX created an expansive and immersive marketing campaign that included several activations across the United States, as well as some creative collaborations with brands across the food and beverage, hospitality, and lifestyle categories.
Kenya Hardaway Green, svp, integrated promotions, FX Networks–and a 2018 Brand Genius honoree for ADWEEK—said the global launch for the Alien: Earth marketing campaign was a year in the making, with a lot of moving parts involved for the rollout.
The executive, who is certainly no stranger to spearheading two-part immersive campaigns, having done so earlier this year for Grotesquerie, told ADWEEK that experimental activations and brand collaborations were a priority.
“The experiential concept that we put together and wanted to bring to fans had multiple beats, and it was constructed that way intentionally,” Hardaway Green said.
Creating out-of-this-world activations
One of the first activations that FX launched was The Wreckage, which lets fans explore a spaceship crash site. The activation first appeared at South by Southwest (SXSW) earlier this year and also landed at last month’s San Diego Comic-Con.
Hardaway Green said that The Wreckage was inspired by the pilot of the show, which features the crash of the Weyland-Yutani spacecraft, the USCSS Maginot, which brings the alien creatures to the planet. The SDCC iteration also included a daytime and nighttime portion (dubbed “The Wreckage: Code Red”) that allowed more adventurous guests to take part in a creepy mission.
“We felt like that setup just really demanded an immersive engagement,” Hardaway Green said. “Building out that scene and featuring The Wreckage, and allowing fans to step into the world and explore, became the focus of that experience.”
Hardaway Green added that there were a lot of elements earlier in the year that could not be revealed in March at SXSW, so they had to build slowly as the campaign progressed; however, the early activation still utilized key moments and incorporated radio frequency identification technology (RFID), which uses radio waves to do things like track objects or trigger effects.