Becoming the most watched season of True Detective to date, HBO’s latest foray into the world of True Detective takes us to the harsh, frozen landscape of Ennis, Alaska, a community at the edge of the world. This marked a major stylistic change that inspired a unique objective for this team to stir up anticipation from existing fans of the franchise while establishing a brand new chapter unlike the three that came before it, creating the exciting and surprising integrated marketing campaign for the series' mysterious and chilling fourth chapter True Detective: Night Country.
From a shockingly opposite first look image from what fans had seen in season 1, we showcased our two female leads immersed in the cool blue surroundings of Ennis Alaska - The antithesis to the warm colors and environment which surrounded the iconic leads of season one. This sparked the initial conversations and lead us to a trailer and key art release at CCXP in Brazil, a rivetting catch up campaign showing the connections of shot styles and mood through the seasons while still highlighting the evolution and distinction of this new chapter, time truly is a flat circle. We brough Ennis to both Los Angeles and New York with ice billboards that melted to reveal eerie quotes from the series and releasing props that had been frozen in the spiral etched ice. The campaign continued to pick up speed and traction across social media with custom assets, BTS peeks from on-set compliments of Jodie Foster's camera roll, and so much more.
While the season concluded in a blinding storm of mystery & shocking reveals, the results of the campaign were clear to see. Season 4 was a smash hit, outperforming previous True Detective seasons and averaging 13.5 million cross-platform viewers across episodes. This solidified the new season as a major step in the right direction, and showed us that masterful direction and knowledge of your audience can lead you to surprising new levels. You only have to stay true & listen to your fans. Like Navarro said, “the Night Country, it takes us... One by one.”
