Lifetime® ramps up its unique, multi-faceted marketing campaign this week promoting the highly anticipated seriesDevious Maids, premiering Sunday, June 23 at 10pm ET/7pm PT. Capitalizing on the series’ star power: Creator Marc Cherry (Desperate Housewives), Executive Producer Eva Longoria (Desperate Housewives) and the all-star ensemble cast, the campaign is poised to draw mass awareness and buzz through salacious tactical executions on multiple platforms.
Targeting adults 25-54 with a heavy emphasis on women, the campaign’s key art features three iconic elements central to the plot of the series: sex, lies and murder. With the notion of “dirty secrets” at the forefront of the campaign, the creative shows a maid wiping “sex” from a steamy shower, sweeping “lies” under the rug and mopping up bloody “murder.”
“The bold images of this campaign are loud, in your face and hard to miss,” says Muriel Solomon, Head of Marketing, Specialty Channels and Shaw Media Advertising and Production. “By bringing the alluring creative and its distinct, suggestive messaging to life through targeted executions and media placement, we’re building mass awareness and buzz around the series in places where we’re sure to reach our core audience.”
In an unprecedented move, Lifetime is transforming the powerful key art into three real-life video executions – each featuring one key campaign component: sex, lies and murder – to be shared exclusively through social media. To elevate social sharing, Lifetime will seed out its Devious Maidscontent to highly-targeted female-skewing websites, celebrity fan bases and influential online communities.
To begin driving early intrigue, a multi-phased on-air campaign kicked off in May with two 10 second teases, showcasing the series star power and drama. A 30 second promo ensued, followed by two custom character spots centred on the series’ employers and their maids. Spots have been cross promoted on all Shaw Media channels and will receive full-day on-air domination across Shaw Media specialty channels on launch day. Leading into the launch of the series and further bringing the creative to life, Lifetime has developed three custom on-air bugs where sex, lies and murder appear on-screen and are cleared away by the hand of a maid.
A strategic media buy in the Toronto area features an extensive out-of-home campaign designed with women on-the-go in mind. Commuters can catch a glimpse of the sexy lead cast on a larger-than-life marquee billboard off the Gardiner Expressway, at the high-traffic Toronto Eaton Centre, on a triptych billboard at Yonge & Dundas square and on wild postings throughout the city. Targeting female-centric destinations, Devious Maids posters and ads are grabbing attention across the GTA in over 50 beauty salons, 280 restaurant washrooms and 275 change rooms in major clothing outlets such as Winners. Nationally, the creative for Devious Maids can be seen in a stunning ad in Hello! Canada as of June 20.
Beginning today, Devious Maids dominates the homepage at Yahoo OMG! and takes over coveted pre-roll spots on YouTube, TMZ, Perez Hilton, People.com and Glam Media family sites. To generate even more anticipation and interest, Lifetime has released the pilot episode of Devious Maidsonline at mylifetimetv.ca.
The marketing campaign and video executions were developed in-house by Shaw Media’s Marketing team with print materials from Lifetime US.
The inaugural season of Devious Maids premieres Sunday, June 23 at 10pm ET/7pm PT exclusively on Lifetime. Lifetime will be on national free preview in over 10 million homes until June 30.
