100 years in the future, Earth is on the brink of destruction and humanity’s last hope is to abandon the planet for a new home. Mankind’s best and brightest develop The Ark program, a fleet of high-tech spaceships that will strategically carry Earth’s inhabitants to a habitable new world deep in outer space. However, when Ark One is badly damaged mid-journey, it’s ragtag crew must work together to fill an empty leadership void, keep the ship running, and ensure humanity’s chance at survival.

Season 1 of the Ark focused very heavily on internal threats - constant ship breakdowns, discord among the crew, and outright mutiny took focus away from the ultimate mission at hand of finding a new home for humanity. Focus groups between seasons revealed that fans were far less interested in interpersonal conflicts among the crew and more interested in external obstacles the crew could overcome as a team. Viewers appreciated the optimistic vision of a brighter future for the human race, and expressed a strong desire to see Ark One move on from Season 1’s “survival mode” and shift focus to the larger mission at hand.

Our marketing campaign took all of these key learnings into account, embracing the comfort of familiar sci-fi tropes (we wanted fans to feel like they were watching something akin to Star Trek, not Westworld), and highlighting our lead, Sharon Garnet (Christie Burke) as an optimistic, strong captain leading a united crew working together to overcome external conflict rather than fighting amongst themselves.

Ultimately, this campaign was one of the most rewarding achievements of my career, not only because the creative is beautiful, but because everything (and I truly mean everything) was done entirely in-house. No budget, no problem!

Presented here is a small snapshot of the campaign, which included additional on-air launch spots, weekly episodic promos, and a plethora of social and digital content.