Nearly five months after its introduction in the U.S., Discovery+ is set to debut its inaugural global ad campaign, focusing on the breath of genres on the streaming platform. This is the first major marketing push for the service since it debuted in January. 

Due to go live in the U.S. on Monday before rolling out across international markets in the coming weeks, the subscriber-supported platform’s new “Streaming Home Of…” campaign, which was created in-house, underscores the breadth of content offered in genres from food to family to the paranormal.

“This is our first kind of big attempt to talk about [Discovery+] in the context of genres,” says Patrizio “Pato” Spagnoletto, global chief marketing officer of Discovery’s direct-to-consumer operations, which encompasses Discovery+.

The goal of the campaign in part is to drive awareness to new subscribers who might not be familiar with Discovery's brands, shows or talent, by helping them understand what's available on the platform without reinforcing the idea of a skinny bundle. 

“The intent is to rope in these younger audiences,” says Spagnoletto, who expects to have the “Streaming Home Of…” campaign in-market for no less than the next three to four months. According to internal research, de-emphasizing Discovery’s anchor shows and instead going through the platform genre-by-genre resonated with younger audiences, particularly millennials.

Comprising different types of media including TV spots and out-of-home placements, the “Streaming Home Of…” campaign will have to mirror its content and experience, says Spagnoletto, who joined Discovery+ in February from competitor Hulu, where he formerly served as head of marketing.

“Part of the original brief for this campaign was for it to be modular and applicable to different markets,” Spagnoletto says, noting that for some launches in European countries, highlighting Discovery+’s romance and lifestyle genres may be more relevant for audiences than paranormal-related content. “We really want to localize the content that is featured,” he adds.

Discovery may also look to spotlight specific, high-performing titles in addition to genres in the future, such as marketing the platform as the “Streaming Home of ‘The Property Brothers,’” Spagnoletto suggests.

The focus on genres in the new campaign is a fairly unique tactic in the ongoing streaming wars, with AVOD and SVOD services alike typically spotlighting one of two attributes: specific titles and original series in their content libraries, or benefits their platforms offer to users. 

“When we launched our first campaign, we talked a lot about the brands that we had on the linear side,” he continues, saying the crux of its new marketing push is definitively “less about the brands and more about the genres.”

Each of the latest campaign’s spots is built around one category of the Discovery+ content library to illustrate the comprehensiveness of the platform—whose parent Discovery recently inked a landmark deal with AT&T to merge their expansive media assets.

In an ad for the streamer’s family-friendly content, for example, a myriad of clips from Discovery’s programs such as “Mythbusters,” “A Very Brady Renovation,” “Meet the Meerkats” and “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” are all shown in quick sequence before a narrator announces that Discovery+ is “the streaming home for the whole family.”

“We have the luxury of having a healthy media budget to support” the campaign, Spagnoletto adds, saying the in-house creative team worked off the premise that as consumers are exposed to multiple campaign impressions with its different highlighted genres, they will hopefully begin associating Discovery+ with a diverse range of content.

Discovery+’s culinary-centric ads drove the most interest in subscribing to the service, the company's research showed.

And in a further bid to attract cordless youth, the platform’s campaign will include custom social assets, including vertical video placements on Snapchat and TikTok that are slightly tweaked versions of the campaign’s TV ads.