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BERLIN — Pay-TV network Fox Germany has launched an ambush campaign targeting female fans of The Walking Dead, using electronic billboards in Berlin subway stations that feature models who morph into zombies.
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The campaign, developed by Berlin agency Saint Elmo’s exclusively for Fox Germany, appears to be a standard billboard advertising a makeup remover (the “Good Night Cleansing Program”) but as passerbys approach the ad, the cosmetics model morphs into a ghoulish zombie while the ad shifts to feature the Walking Dead logo and the tagline “Season Four First on Fox.”
Fox and St. Elmo’s developed the campaign to appeal particularly to female viewers who, their research shows, are as avid fans of the series as the male demographic.
“The campaign was inspired by a surprising insight – that the horror genre is now as popular with women as it is with men,” says Dennis Pfisterer, Creative Managing Director at Saint Elmo’s. “We drastically countered the outdated cliche that all horror fans are male by using a cliched image in the style of a beauty product ad, so that we could appeal above all to female horror fans, alongside male fans, with this concept of a ‘makeup removal program for good TV nights.'”
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Fox Germany told The Hollywood Reporter that the campaign, currently exclusive to a handful of subway stations in Berlin, could be rolled out across major cities in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, the territories where Fox Germany carries The Walking Dead.
Check out photos of the ad’s harmless and decayed stages below:
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