Christian show ‘The Chosen’ faces backlash for marketing ploy

In case you missed it: ‘Manipulative’: San Antonio ‘The Chosen’ billboard defaced for apparent marketing ploy

The show posted photos of several of the vandalized billboards on its Facebook page. And that left a mix of people on social media outraged, but for drastically different reasons. 

The majority of people commenting on social media appeared to take the vandalism seriously and blamed everyone from Starbucks to “Democratic Satanists” for defacing the billboards, which originally encouraged people to “binge Jesus.” 

Others felt advertisers had gone too far, suggesting that they were attempting to emotionally manipulate people by defacing the billboards with a scrawled graffiti message that criticized the show. 

Jeremiah Smith, the vice president of creative for the show, said that the vandalized advertisements were meant to be seen as satire and accomplished its goal of getting people to “pay attention.” 

The show worked with the Harmon Brothers, the ad agency behind the Squatty Potty commercials. The goal was to make the vandalism on dozens of billboards across the country look real. 

But Smith said the campaign wasn’t expecting backlash and was working to apologize and explain what happened to its “core” group of fans. The show and company have done little to clarify the stunt on their websites or social media accounts. 

The billboard in San Antonio off of Interstate 10 near downtown had been there for days. Seemingly overnight, the billboard looked like it had been vandalized by someone who directed people to a mysterious website that vaguely promised to “reveal answers” at 3:33 p.m. Pacific Standard Time.

Similar acts of “vandalism” could be seen elsewhere in the country and the show posted photos of it on social media.

At 3:33 p.m., a parody video of the devil and a group of students inside a classroom, poking fun at the show and Christianity, was uploaded to the website.

On Wednesday morning, at least 12 hours after the campaign ran, the company responded in a Facebook comment on one of its posts. 

“As you may have heard, these billboards are one part of a larger marketing campaign that launched yesterday,” the company said in the comment section. 

Dallas Jenkins, the show’s director, is reportedly going to explain what was behind the campaign during a streaming event on Wednesday evening. Jenkins is the son of “Left Behind” author Jerry Jenkins. 

Smith said he wished they had acted sooner. 

“We did make one mistake and that is we did not share our plans with our core fans,” Smith said. “We should have included them in on this sooner. When we heard from our core audience, they saw the billboards and vowed to protect the show. They wanted to do something about it.”

Among those core fans were a host of people on social media who felt “hurt” by the promotional stunt. Many even sought to blame others.

One person tagged Jenkins and thanked him for “remaining so strong and steadfast in this evil, corruptive society.” She also thanked him for “doing God’s work.” 

Others weren’t as duped and figured out what was going on soon after the video was posted. 

One person said: “Did I just fall for the greatest marketing ploy ever?” 

Added another: “It makes me sad. Seems misleading and manipulative. I really like ‘The Chosen’ so this hurts.”

“It was never our intention that they were the butt of the joke or somehow the ones we were aiming this at,” Smith said. “Our target audience were people who have never watched the show or never thought to experience the authentic Jesus depicted in the show.

[email protected]