Tubi and Mischief storm Cannes with fake movie posters for festival-goers

Reinforcing the message that Tubi has something for everyone—even advertising people.

Tubi and Mischief storm Cannes with fake movie posters for festival-goers

Much as it did for media buyers during upfront season, Fox-owned streamer Tubi has created a satirical ad campaign set to roll out at Cannes Lions—reminding agencies and other brands of Tubi’s brand proposition that its deep-cut entertainment content has “something for everyone, even ad people.”

The campaign features a slew of fake movie posters riffing on the Cannes experience. The titles and their taglines include:

• “Business as Usual” (“Your email doesn’t care that you’re on the beach.”)
• “Creative Déjà Vu” (“It’s not the same ad. But it’s not different either.”)
• “Posing With a Lion” (“He barely worked on the project.”)
• “Show Me the Receipt” (“The dilemma of the 25 euro beer”)
• “Tears in My Rosé” (“22 entries. 1 shortlist.”)
• “The Economy Class” (“It’s company policy to sit with no legroom for seven hours.”)
• “The Idea Someone Else Did” (“Before it won awards, it was also in your deck.”)
• “The Lions Are Crying” (“It’s so sad, it’s gold.”)
• “Unattended Panel” (“You can’t get there at 9 am when you went to sleep at 7 am.”)

Along with the posters, Tubi will be opening a newsstand near the Palais. And it will also be hosting an activation where sketch artists will create custom drawings placing attendees in their own satirical Cannes posters.

The fun campaign comes out of Tubi’s strategy of celebrating its vast library of niche content. After all, what content could be more niche than targeting a few thousand ad execs?

“With a content library more than 50,000 titles strong, there’s something for everyone on Tubi—even ad people,” said João Viégas, associate creative director at Mischief. “And given that Tubi relies on advertisers as part of its model, it felt only natural that we turn up at advertisers’ biggest festival of the year.” 

Viégas said concepting was easy, as the creatives were essentially writing for themselves. “It was also somewhat therapeutic,” he added. “And a wake-up call that I should stop bragging about awards for work I barely worked on.”

“We wanted to create content specifically for Cannes attendees, highlighting the sometimes irreverent experiences we all share at the festival,” said Cynthia Clevenger, VP of B2B marketing at Tubi, the free ad-supported TV streaming service. “We hear from our users all the time that they ‘feel seen,’ and we hope to exude that same sentiment to the ad community heading to France this month.” 

Nicole Parlapiano, Tubi’s chief marketing officer, will be speaking at the festival—including a conversation about its lauded 2023 Super Bowl campaign with Ad Age and Mischief executive creative director Kevin Mulroy. That talk is happening Wednesday at 9 a.m. at the Infillion Garden in front of the Mondrian (formerly the Grand Hotel).

Read more: How Tubi tricked Super Bowl viewers