CAMPAIGNS
THE HISTORY OF COMEDY
The History of Comedy ran for two seasons. As with our other shows produced under fair use guidelines, we were extremely limited in how much footage we could use. For season one, a conceptual spot campaign helped us get around that. We were also fortunate that the series replied on interviews with a lot of very high-profile (and funny) folks, so were able to draw on that material for spots and social. The first season initially ran on Thursday nights, but news events kept preempting the show, and it was indefinitely delayed for a while. That gave us an opportunity for a relaunch campaign. Sean Hayes was the EP of the show and was intrigued enough by our pitch to come out to NY and shoot spots going straight at the preemption issue. He returned for season 2 and had a little fun with a buzzy CNN image spot, and a new launch concept parody of the Masterpiece Theater open.
SOCIAL
The lack of licensable material was a real challenge for social for The History of Comedy. We tried a few options to get around it, and found that what worked best were the quote graphics. We leaned into those and worked hard to find things that would inspire to people share. We also worked to feature high profile talent involved in videos where we could. For Season 2, we were also able to do enough material with Sean Hayes to reserve some exclusively for social.
