Inside Disney’s ‘Very Intense’ Marketing Plan for ‘This Is Us’ Creator’s Top-Secret Show ‘Paradise’
SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers from the series premiere of Hulu’s “Paradise.”
In an overly saturated media market, it’s hard for any show to break through. And it becomes even harder when a network or streamer can’t truthfully answer this simple question regarding new TV series: “What’s it about?”
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So in the case of “Paradise,” Hulu’s new political thriller drama starring Sterling K. Brown, James Marsden and Julianne Nicholson, they answered the question honestly, if not completely, ahead of the Dan Fogelman-created show’s Jan. 28 premiere in TV spots and online promos, collaborations with influencers, and even skywriting across major U.S. cities, by making it clear what they were saying was suspicious each time.
“In our early conversations with Dan, we knew we wanted to protect the twist at the end of the first episode so viewers could experience it themselves, which meant we couldn’t really market the whole story and we had to protect some surprise elements,” Disney Entertainment Television marketing chief Shannon Ryan tells Variety. “So, we took a phased approach by seeding out a little bit at a time with a focus on the mystery, the world, the stakes and spotlighting the incredible performances from Sterling, James and Julianne. Then we ramped up the FOMO by hosting early influencer screenings where we taped viewers’ reactions that we then used in promo spots and on social. At that point we wanted to make it clear that, ‘Yes, there’s an unexpected twist in the show,’ but we didn’t want to reveal much more than that because we still had to protect the viewing experience.”
From “This Is Us” creator Fogelman, “Paradise” follows Brown’s Xavier Collins, a Secret Service agent charged with protecting former president Cal Bradford (James Marsden) in a picturesque community. Cal is killed at the top of the premiere and, because of his tumultuous relationship with Xavier before his death, Xavier is left behind as the top suspect in Cal’s murder. Spoiler alert: The twist here is all of this is taking place in a massive underground bunker with no explanation as to what got everyone down there in the first place.
Ryan says the “Paradise” premiere marketing plan, which the department began developing six months ago, was “a delicate balance turning over each card slowly and strategically,” and required the team to keep track of a “very intense and very long” Google doc coordinating the rollout and assets.
Hulu launched the teaser trailer for “Paradise” in November, drawing 43 million views, followed by the trailer release in January, which has surpassed 65 million. “The sentiment was off the charts positive” for those beats, which led to promo across TikTok, Meta, Reddit and YouTube and TV spots tied to NFL, NBA and College Football programming.
In the final pre-launch marketing phase, Ryan and co. dropped the premiere episode of “Paradise” on Hulu and Disney+ as an early surprise ahead of the planned release of the first three episodes on Hulu on Tuesday. The first 20 minutes of Episode 1 were also posted to TikTok.
“On Sunday night, we leaned into paid and organic across social to get the word out and also had incredible support from the show talent,” Ryan said. “The massive NFL playoff game ended right around the time the episode went live, so we saw a significant surge in viewership shortly after the game wrapped. We also saw social conversation increase over 300% following the surprise drop.”
The premise behind the sampling strategy is simple: “We thought if viewers could experience the twist, they would hopefully be hooked, and there’s no better way to sell a propulsive, twisty, action-packed show like Paradise than the show itself,” Ryan said.
The sampling continued Wednesday when Disney’s broadcaster ABC aired the premiere episode of “Paradise” ahead of cable channel FX’s turn on Saturday. Fogelman was already cutting the network versions of the episode last fall when Variety spoke with him for this week’s cover story featuring Brown.
“It’s the best 48 minute promo we could ever ask for, so the team worked up a clever plan to make the episode available in as many different places to as many different viewers as possible. With the support of so many colleagues across Disney, we were able to air the first episode on ABC and FX, as well as make it available to all subscribers on Disney+ — in addition to Hulu — to ensure we created the broadest possible reach and the biggest possible sample.”
The team is also taping into that broad audience by not shying away from the big reunion that “Paradise” marks between Brown and “This Is Us” creator Dan Fogelman, even though the shows are from very different genres. The NBC family drama was a hit for a reason.
“The thing we’ll lean into is that, ‘This Is Us’ was a show where people felt something and thought something and related to the characters, but at the same time, felt like they were getting something original, and it was an emotional experience,” Disney Television Group president Craig Erwich said. “And that is certainly the case with ‘Paradise,’ although it’s in the guise of a thriller. There are multiple angles and components to the appeal of this, and we will focus in some of our marketing tactics, we’ll focus on all of them, and in some of our marketing tactics, we’ll focus on specific slices of them. There are so many dimensions to the show, and we have so many levers to pull within the Disney company, when we put the spotlight on something, the breadth of the campaign will be pretty sizable.”
Now that the cat is out of the bag, the Disney TV marketing team “can put all our cards on the table,” as the rest of the Season 1 episodes roll out weekly on Hulu.
“So, the next beat for us is a killer post-launch trailer that does just that,” Ryan said. “And our stellar cast, who have been expertly maneuvering how to position the twist pre-launch, can now finally speak freely about the secret of ‘Paradise.'”
From here on out, the twist is no longer sacred and “Paradise” fans are encouraged to speculate wildly about where the show is headed over the course of its eight-episode first season. And now, their reactions to the twist are part of the marketing campaign.
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