True North Agency · ABC · LOST
LOST & found.
True North Agency · ABC · LOST
By its third season, LOST was a ratings juggernaut that was starting to wear on fans with tangled plot twists and too few answers. ABC tackled it head on: the show would end after six seasons, with no more reruns and no long gaps in the schedule. Nobody had done that before.
Season three was about to return from hiatus and run uninterrupted. Our job was to tell everyone their favorite mystery was back, and explain a whole new way of watching it.
LOST fans hunted down Easter eggs and analyzed every frame, so we gave them a trail to follow. Site takeovers, banner ads, AR tie-ins, and rich media all borrowed their look straight from the show, and the creative swapped itself out by date, ramping up intrigue and urgency as the premiere got closer.
Some ads never mentioned the show at all. Oceanic Airlines, the show’s fictional airline, ran on travel sites and pointed superfans to Find 815, the online mystery game.
No more reruns. No more mid-season breaks. Nothing but new episodes until the end. In a world before Netflix, that was as close to binging as TV got, so we made it the urgency message: don’t fall behind, because the show isn’t waiting.
Some ads reminded fans what they loved, some caught new viewers up, and some pushed to the game. Programmatic targeting put each one in front of the right person, and I set a look and feel that made all of them feel like they lived inside the show.
True North Agency