Digital Campaign my roles: concepts, all copy, creative direction
STARZ’s show Counterpart is built on paranoia, bureaucracy, and the unsettling feeling that something isn’t quite right. So instead of explaining the complicated sci-fi world, I let fans try to enter it.
We launched the campaign with a real job posting on Monster.com, inviting applicants to join a vague, Cold War-era agency with a description that was just strange enough to feel wrong.
From there, the application became the experience.
Applicants who responded to the employment ad were sent video cyphers to decode. Solving the cyphers led them to the URL location of the application site.
Fans had to solve increasingly difficult puzzles to ascend each level of the agency.
An FAQ, About, and other sections hinted at the nefarious purposes of the agency in the tone of the series’ signature black humor.
Along the way a staff psychiatrist asked bizarre questions to assess the prospective employee's personality and fitness for spy work.
At the conclusion, the fan was given a shareable ID Card that included notes from each of the five supervisors that they had completed tasks for.
The first 100 fans to reach the final level of Management were sent a new employee onboarding kit, complete with hidden flashdrive and poison pill.
