No fight scenes. No explosions. No saving the world from Armageddon. To captivate our audience from beginning to end, the campaign centered on Deadpool’s Valentine’s Day messages, an unconventional approach for an unconventional – and uncompromising–movie. We offered viewers the gift that is Deadpool via hilariously suggestive, profane, and unconventional messages of “love.” Multiple pieces of creative featured Deadpool breaking the fourth wall as he spoke straight-to-camera playing up his raunchy persona and owning that “R” rating.

To spread the gospel of Deadpool far and wide, we developed some innovative distribution strategies to bombard viewers with messages they’d find funny, entertaining, and appropriately off color. Deadpool hijacked multiple channels for a commercial event that made national standards teams cower in fear, taking over all the ad inventory for airings of nine programs – with diverse viewership – across five networks—MTV, VH1, Comedy Central, Spike and Logo. The programming in those blocks ran commercial-free and were populated only by our Deadpool spots, which felt more like genuine content than ads, giving the fans more of what they really want: funny, engaging material that lets them in on the joke. We also covered our social bases, pushing +25 social posts across platforms as well as taking over MTV and Comedy Central Snapchat Discover platforms—so everyone from your sister to your grandma knew that Deadpool was coming in hot.

Fans across the board embraced the campaign, with the limited commercial interruption event resulting in a combined 130.49 million P2+ impressions (64 Million P12-34) for Deadpool. The content generated 60.3 million social impressions and a combined 5.3 million online video views. As a direct result, there was a 34% viral lift in social conversation—which extended across 15 international markets, including Asia and Latin America—during the measured time period.

The unusual promotion also earned a great deal of press, with features in Deadline, AdAge, The Wrap, and many others.

Through all of our efforts across on-air, digital and social, we delivered over 211 million media and added value impressions in support of Deadpool. This first-of-its-kind execution helped Deadpool to a stellar $150 million opening weekend, landing at #1 for consecutive weeks at the box office and breaking every box office record in R-rated film history in the process.