Tubi celebrates rapid growth in new ads from Mischief

Tubi puts a creative spin on its viewership data in a new brand campaign that playfully compares the streamer’s popularity—based on its 75 million monthly viewers—to the size of other populations, including babies and France. Check out the latest Ad Age events and award programs The campaign, from Mischief @ No Fixed Address, includes out-of-home ads, influencer activations and four videos directed by Andreas Nilsson of Biscuit Filmworks (who also directed the brand’s “Just Keeps Going” ads last fall). The 30-second spots feature wry copywriting and Nilsson’s trademark quirky casting to frame the data in amusing ways—and draw absurd yet memorable conclusions from it. The insight The creative concept came from the insight that while Tubi has grown rapidly in recent years—thanks in large part to its 2023 Super Bowl campaign, which won the Grand Effie for effectiveness last week—many people still think it’s a niche platform. “Because we’re the least legacy brand on the gauge, people are still continually shocked at how big we are,” Nicole Parlapiano, Tubi’s chief marketing officer, told Ad Age. “We’re bigger than Paramount[+]. We’re bigger than Max. But the perception is we’re small—or, because we have niche content, maybe our audience is niche. We wanted to communicate our size and scale, but do it in a way that’s understandable.” (While Paramount+ and Max require paid subscriptions, Tubi is a free, ad-supported streaming service.) The campaign was crafted to work with both business-to-business audiences (some OOH ads in Times Square broke during the upfronts this month) as well as consumers. The focus on audience size obviously speaks to media buyers, but the approach is also intended to get consumers wondering what they’re missing out on. “It’s a little bit of FOMO [for consumers],” said Parlapiano. “Tubi viewers are not these people out on the fringes. People might think, ‘If this many people are on Tubi, maybe there’s something for me.’” “The idea for more popular than popular things came from the brief our strategists wrote,” said Carl Peterson, creative director at Mischief, who worked on the idea with partner Eleanor Rask. “They had a line in there about how if Tubi viewers were a country, it would be bigger than France. We thought that was pretty compelling, so we just ran with it. Like, babies are common, but when you learn that Tubi is actually way more popular than babies—that felt sticky to us.” Tapping influencers There is a strong influencer element to the campaign. For example, Tubi collaborated with “Looking for a Man in Finance” creator Megan Boni on the TikTok below, in which Boni says that “more people watch Tubi than slide into my DMs” after her song went viral. @girl_on_couch 74.9M slides into my DMs...but more people watch @Tubi #TubiPartner ♬ original sound - Girl On Couch Tubi also partnered with Taha Arshad (@tahalikesyou), Jade Darmawangsa (@jadedarmawangsa), Nimay Ndolo (@nimay.ndolo) and Callie and DeeDee Davis (@callie.deedee) for other TikTok collabs. “What we liked about the creative direction is it worked contextually in so many different mediums and had so much range,” said Parlapiano. The OOH ads show that flexibility too, comparing Tubi to everything from pickleball players to dating apps to the Brooklyn Bridge. Less of an underdog As Tubi grows, one challenge is to remain a scrappy upstart—at least in brand voice—and not lose the energy and edge that come from being a challenger brand, Parlapiano said. (The streamer rebranded this year to appeal more to Gen Z.) “[Before the 2023 Super Bowl], we were a deep underdog and a deep unknown,” she said. “Now there’s a bar for our work. That puts pressure on us, and I don’t mind that pressure, but I also don’t want it to fuck up the way we come at [our campaigns] from a very raw place.” This is top of mind for next February’s Super Bowl as well. Parlapiano confirmed Tubi will have creative on the game, which will be broadcast on Tubi parent Fox. Mischief is currently being briefed on the project. Ad Age Small Agency Conference & Awards Join us July 23 & 24 in Boston Learn more here The goal for the Super Bowl campaign will be to continue to raise awareness and viewership numbers in a way that breaks through like the 2023 Super Bowl creative did. “Everyone’s excited but also knows the bar we’ve set,” said Parlapiano. “We’ll explore a couple of directions and leave some room for wild card stuff. To be culturally relevant, you almost can’t produce things six months in advance. So I think we’ll just keep the pulse on how everyone’s feeling.” The “More Popular Than” campaign will run across OOH, connected TV, radio, podcasts, social and banner ads across digital. VaynerMedia handled the media buys.

Tubi celebrates rapid growth in new ads from Mischief

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