Creator Charles Addams named her Wednesday, inspired by the children’s nursery rhyme. Each generation of storytellers embraced their own twist on the character. Never before has she been the narrative center, until Tim Burton’s reimagining of Wednesday Addams.

We needed to introduce the new drama series Wednesday in the biggest way possible to achieve global ratings success, build anticipation and engagement, and turn Wednesday into a global pop culture figure as the ultimate iconoclastic and appealing outsider, especially resonant for her shared Gen Z tribe.

Campaign objectives: engage multiple worldwide audiences and gather a community of fans hungering for this new series.

• Build anticipation and sustain conversation across a long-lead window that spanned 6 months.

• Event-ize Wednesday as the next must-see series for a global and multi-generational audience.

• Build conversation and engagement, ensuring that every beat of the campaign fueled social reactions in surprising and provocative ways.

Wednesday and Gen Z both hate ‘marketing’ aimed at them, laden with inauthenticity and condescension. Their inherent skepticism animated the overall approach.

Wednesday’s voice was the campaign’s guiding north star – challenging ourselves what would Wednesday do? This creative platform is all about channeling Wednesday’s outcast attitude and Gen Z outlook across every piece of creative. The campaign looked for moments where Wednesday was grounded in our world and highly contextual of her surroundings - even acknowledging that she is in a marketing campaign.

Six months prior to premiere, Wednesday began the conversation by introducing herself with a self-aware Twitter feed – recognizing that she’s in a marketing campaign and loathing each step along the way. Every beat of the campaign was social-led or concurrent with offline releases – designed to drive social conversations and create earned media headlines. Wednesday often broke the 4th wall, speaking directly to fans.

Wednesday’s introduction as an iconoclast and the ultimate outsider started with her personal and very active Twitter feed in June. Over six months and hundreds of posts, Wednesday’s relationship with fans deepened. Every new creative drop (teaser, art, character posts, trailer, OOH) was simultaneously released on Wednesday’s social feeds alongside paid media – and propelled additional conversations, more followers, and greater engagement.

Wednesday’s voice and anti-marketing attitude called out daily tedium in both a series of self-aware out-of-home contextual posts ranging from commuter boards/posts/wallscapes, to transit and airport takeovers, and surprising ambient pop-ups including mirror clings, elevator signs, and coffee sleeves – and concurrent social comments. Each unit carried Wednesday’s sharp sting, provoked widespread social sharing, and kept building conversational anticipation.

Contextual OOH creative executions infused social conversational stimuli into the Wednesday PR outreach events, like Thing’s fingertip stroll through midtown (posted on YouTube) coinciding with NY Comic Con’s panels.

Wednesday Twitter established her voice through 83 posts in June and July. Wednesday as muse drove her Instagram, with 163 posts embodying the snarky, self-aware, and sardonic voice of being the one who overhears all. Wednesday’s anti-awards post to Emmy Nominees gained millions of views and headlines in mid-September.

In October, Wednesday hung on OOH walls, posts, and billboards across 15 world cities and five continents. Each major piece of creative was amplified by Wednesday social feeds.

Contextual social posts surrounded global PR events, like her Black Carpet Premiere as part of the global press tour. An interactive promotion called for applications to Wednesday's school, with 2 million received. Join Nevermore Academy drove millions of posts, replies, and reactions - extending Wednesday’s conversational velocity into early November.

In the final two weeks leading to premiere, Wednesday’s Black Friday shopping and World Cup posts drove another wave of conversations.

Creating a sustained conversation with Wednesday and her fans became the biggest pre-premiere campaign in Netflix history with +3B earned impressions in the US. Wednesday’s social channels gained +3M followers and added +50M followers across the main cast’s self-managed social channels. Fans embraced Wednesday as the ultimate DGAF hero.

Wednesday introduced herself over six months. Global dominance followed. Wednesday was the biggest English language new series premiere in Netflix history with more than 1B hours viewed. Within six weeks of premiere, Wednesday was greenlit for a second season.

By grounding the pre-launch campaign in Wednesday’s voice combined with an anti-marketing attitude, an enormous social conversation was created, steadily built over six months, then catapulted to unprecedented heights when Wednesday’s dance challenge earned 25 Billion TikTok views after the premiere was released.