By David Pomeroy,

Would you ever tell your customers NOT to buy from you?

In a brilliant blend of supposed vandalism, fake controversy and humor, one of my favorite shows has done just that.

The Chosen is a crowdfunded show about the life of Jesus Christ you’ve probably heard of and hopefully enjoy as much as I and my family do.

The marketing folks behind the show are are taking advantage of the Easter season to promote the show on billboards in various cities across the country.

The twist is…they’ve vandalized some of their own billboards (sort of). They set up a satirical website where Satan instructs a classroom of student devils in the need to prevent people from watching The Chosen, chosensux.com. The even created a “disciples invaders game”, a twist on Space Invaders using characters from the show.

With so few advertisers willing to stick their neck out just a little, choosing instead to run boring ads no one pays attention to, this is an absolutely brilliant move.

They make people wonder, talk to others, drive traffic to a website they that is supposedly trashing them, all in a playful way to drive awareness.

They used billboards as the core of this strategy. Maybe a creative out of home advertising could work for your business too?

Insider’s Comments:  We appreciate David’s reporting as this campaign received a lot of social media comments both positive and negative.  Interestingly, most of the negative comments came from fans of the show, who were disappointed they were not given a heads up 0n the campaign.

However, in an example of the effectiveness of OOH driving a target market to social media to gather additional information, I went to the web site Chosensux.com.  On this site, the humor continues with a “disciples invaders” video game and this terrific video below.  The goal of the campaign is to drive new viewers to try out The Chosen video series.  Insider thinks sometimes you have to be outside the box to create new markets.  What do you think?  Let me know at johnweller@billboardinsider.com.

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