By day, the billboard looked like someone had driven a handful of bloody wooden stakes into it. At night, a light hit those stakes and their shadows came together to form Dracula’s face, mouth open and fangs out.
The Problem With a Famous Monster
Dracula may be the most adapted monster in screen history. That made BBC One’s job harder. Its new series, from Sherlock creators Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, had to feel new to viewers who thought they had seen every version of the Count.
The show premiered on New Year’s Day at 9 pm on BBC One and BBC iPlayer, under the campaign line “Bloody Legend.” BBC Creative, the corporation’s own agency, wanted an outdoor campaign that would surprise people the way the show did.
What the Stakes Were Hiding
The team used shadow art, where light falling on a group of objects casts a shadow shaped like something else. Bright red 3D stakes were fixed to the left side of the board at carefully worked out angles.
In daylight they looked random. After sunset, a spotlight fired across them and their shadows joined up into Dracula’s grinning silhouette.
Olly Harnett, creative head at BBC Creative, called it “one of the most ambitious special builds” the team had taken on.
A Glass Case for Emergencies
Below the billboard sat a glass box holding one wooden stake, with the instruction “In case of vampires, break glass.”
Chris Hooper, head of marketing at BBC One, said the series was “laced with dark humor” and that every part of the campaign was designed to catch people off guard.
Two Cities, Two Builds
The BBC made 2 versions of the board. One went up on Brixton Road in London and the other on Upper Dean Street in Birmingham. Both were unveiled on December 30, 2019, two days before the premiere.
How a Billboard Reached Millions
Most people saw the board on their phones, not on the street. The BBC shared a 10 second time lapse of the stakes turning into Dracula as the sun went down, and the clip spread fast.
According to media agency Talon, the campaign produced around 43,000 social posts, a reach of 22 million and more than 7 million video views. It was written up in more than 40 articles and reached the front page of Reddit.
The Team Behind It
Executive creative director Helen Rhodes and creative head Olly Harnett led the work at BBC Creative. Talon Outdoor handled the media with Havas and Grand Visual. D&AD recognised the billboard in Art Direction in 2020.
A billboard usually looks the same at noon and at midnight. This one waited for dark to show its vampire.
Campaign Name: Dracula Billboard (“Bloody Legend”)
Agency Name: BBC Creative (media by Talon Outdoor, with Havas and Grand Visual)
Brand Name: BBC One
Location: Brixton Road, London, and Upper Dean Street, Birmingham, UK (December 2019 to January 2020)
