Ugly Americans Grossroots Campaign

For the second season of Ugly Americans, the deck was stacked against us. The show premiered well and had a devoted fan base, but the ratings it was pulling were not high enough. It was a show on the brink. And we had been told that there wouldn't be much airtime available for promos, so there wasn't much in the budget to promote it. But that's where we got to work. As Creative Director for our marketing, I worked closely with our multiplatform/digital division and our promotions marketing division, and we came up with a plan and a concept: What if Ugly Americans (a show about monsters living in the big city) is only doing poorly because the Nielsen corporation undersamples monster-Americans in their ratings? We used the little money we had for one extravagance: Makeup and Prosthetics. Then we could let the monsters loose in the city and film a moody documentary about their feelings of marginalization, which we could seed out as web videos. The monsters would also start a facebook group (known as FUGLY: Friends of Ugly Americans) and maintain a social presence, letting people know about their plight. The results were super-popular web spots, front page presence on Reddit, and more buzz for the show.