Profane Signs Promote New HBO Comedy
HBO is aiming to build buzz for its new original comedy series “Eastbound & Down” by sending street teams to post humorous profane signage in New York City and Los Angeles.
The series’ central character is Kenny Powers, a former professional ace pitcher who bounced himself out of the big leagues on a losing streak of self-destructive behavior. The cling signs are designed in kind, featuring a baseball that’s apparently shattered the windows the signs are posted on with the phrase, “Kenny Powers was here, motherf&@#ers,” emblazoned on the ball.
The ball also bears the title of the series, which focuses on Powers’ misadventures during his post-big-league downfall, teaching physical education in his North Carolina hometown middle school. The series starts its six-episode season on HBO in primetime on Feb. 15.
Grand Central Marketing conceived the bi-coastal campaign and is executing it with street teams posting 5,000 of the eye-catching clings on windows and mirrors in sports bars and liquor stores in each city, targeting men aged 18 to 34 as the prime audience.
“We’re putting them exactly where these guys go,” Matthew Glass, Grand Central Marketing CEO, said.
And GCM teams are likely to revisit many of the same locations over the two weeks of the signage stunt, counting on bar patrons to steal the clings–and spark a viral effect when they post them in their apartments. “People will take them down, and that’s good,” Glass said. “The stealing of the balls is an appropriate interaction.”
Running street stunts for HBO is a kind of specialty for GCM. The agency ran a street campaign for HBO’s short-lived offbeat dramedy “John From Cincinnati”−nominally focused on California’s surfer subculture–by sending faux surfers out in wetsuits carrying surfboards on Manhattan streets bearing information about the series.
