When marketing needs PR: ‘The Chosen’ creator apologizes for anti-ad rollout

The popular TV series “The Chosen” faced criticism for a recent marketing campaign involving billboards placed throughout the country, not praising, but mocking the show. By using a bit of reverse psychology, the anti-ad was an attempt to garner attention and interest by encouraging people not to watch the show.

Signs were designed to look like they had been defaced with graffiti saying, The Chosen is boring with chosensux.com painted across the top. The URL leads to a YouTube page called StopWatchingTheChosen, with a video of a comic rendition of the devil teaching a class of minions how to prevent people from watching the series.

The campaign was not announced, and show creators never mentioned they were the ones behind the ads, which led some fans to believe the attacks were real. Once they discovered it was satire — which is evident once you land on the video — some thought it was hilarious, clever and engaging. But others were disappointed and felt misled by a TV series (a brand) they had trusted.