Mood Board: How TBWA dreamed up different multiverses for DirecTV’s latest campaign

Eric Clapton sitting in with the Beatles. Scooby Doo and the Harlem Globetrotters. Awkwardly introducing your mother to coworkers. We all love a crossover, a marketing gimmick as old as time.

To promote DirecTV’s Stream—a streaming service pitched as an offering that combines on-demand and live TV—the creative agency TBWA went whole hog with the crossover theme, turning Serena Williams into DC’s Wonder Woman, placing the tennis star in The Matrix, and most recently, giving Major League Baseball legends proton packs in the Ghostbusters universe.

Marketing Brew caught up with TBWA creative directors Mark Winters and Ryan Buckley, who’ve both worked on the campaign since its debut last summer, to get the skinny on how DirecTV’s multiverse came to be.

Formula: “When we first started looking across the category, how competitors sell the notion of entertainment—it’s a lot of clips, right? It’s a clip of this show, followed by a clip of this show,” said Buckley. Or, it’s “people on the couch,” added Winters.

Though the spots don’t shy away from the couch entirely, the team leaned heavily into crossovers, landing on a schtick the team hopes can be rehashed and reused, à la Snickers’ “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry” campaign.

“There are two things that people at large have a cultural connection to, and that is athletic superstars and these sort of cultural blockbuster films and television shows, these pieces of IP that we all know and love,” Winters told Marketing Brew. It also helps that many consider Williams to already be “a real-life Wonder Woman,” he added.

Cutting room: Winters estimates that the team pitched roughly 200 different mashup concepts before settling on the three that are already running, including incorporating characters from Rick and Morty, Game of Thrones, and Downton Abbey.

One idea left on the cutting floor was Larry David throwing out a first pitch, only to screw up and get booed. “It didn’t read as a mashup right away,” said Winters.

Easter egg: Yes, that is tennis legend John McEnroe in the ad starring Williams as Wonder Woman, whose lunch is ruined by her swat, repeating his infamous line, “You cannot be serious.”

And, naturally, in The Matrix spot, Williams is given a choice between a red and blue tennis ball, a call back to the pills offered to Matrix hero Neo.

Stay-Puft: You might be wondering how Cincinnati Reds mascot Mr. Redlegs got the call to replace the iconic Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man?

“Mr. Met had some contractual obligations,” joked Buckley. “And at the end of the day, Mr. Redlegs does have a little more of a sinister kind of look about him, which we really dug.”