CourtTV: Award Winning Viral Campaign

Hell has no fury like a woman scorned

A Little Background

CourtTV was launching a new show, Parco P.I.. The show followed around a private investigator and captured his wild experiences.

The Marketing Objective

Break through the clutter and generate awareness and drive tune-in for the new program, Parco P.I.

The Research

Armed with research showing that 90% of Parco P.I.’s cases dealt with adultery, we knew this content would be a lure to audiences.

The Creative Insight

If money were no object, what would you do to call out your cheating spouse? A billboard came to mind. A simple, believable, non-branded billboard.

Creative Elements:

The integrated marketing promotion combined a blog with gorilla marketing, outdoor signage, public relations, social media, stunts and video to create a seemingly real scandal involving a betrayed woman, Emily, who outs her husband’s infidelity by turning it into a media spectacle.

It Worked: CourtTV Parco P.I. “Scorned Woman Billboard/Steven and Emily Billboard”

With the a nominal $150k media spend for 12 billboards across the country, we netted over $2M in added media exposure from GMA, Ryan Seacrest, New York Times, and news outlets across the Country etc (arguably more as this Billboard is still going viral to this day). This campaign won multiple creative awards including the coveted Cannes Gold Lion. An actor played the part of Emily in stunts within the New York City market, including tossing her cheating husband’s belongings on the sidewalk in front of Bryant Park during lunch hour rush (while ranting hysterically). The video seeded on YouTube became the 16th most linked-to video of all time.

Launch week results include:

• 2,037,900 blog page views

• Over 1,600 emails sent to "Emily"

• 7th most viewed video on YouTube

Credits under Amy’s maiden name: Amy Mirwald, Creative Director/Copywriter

Tease Billboard