• by Amy Corr , Staff Writer @MediaPostOTL, August 21, 2006

HBO turned Times Square into a modern-day Roman Colosseum to promote the DVD release of its series "Rome."

Roman soldiers, led by a town crier, hand-delivered copies of the DVD to the Virgin Megastore in Times Square, along with Tower Records in Lincoln Center and Circuit City in Union Square last week.

Soldiers also handed out New York subway maps to tourists that highlighted--in big red blocks--the names, addresses and appropriate subway lines to take to participating stores around the city where one could buy the DVD.

The campaign was conceived to "create buzz and awareness of the brand," said Elizabeth Forber, lead agent on the HBO business for PHD, the agency behind the media buy.

"We wanted to get 'Rome' back into the public consciousness and ready viewers for season two's return in January," she continued.

In addition to the New York stunt, a series of outdoor, print and online ads, running through the end of the month, were used to get rid of the "perception that Rome is a period-piece drama," said Forber. "The campaign leveraged the [period piece] theme into modern-day vernacular," she said.

One outdoor ad running in New York and Los Angeles featured an oversized dagger literally piercing the DVD package. The ad proved to be a challenge for PHD, given the 3-D canvas' huge size and the cost for the teaser message.

Earlier this month, five consecutive right-hand page ads ran in Entertainment Weekly, The Week and USA Today illustrating the Roman Guide to politics, religion, communication and democracy.

Politics showed the word "filibuster" and a dagger; Religion featured the word "sacrament" coupled with a pile of money; Communication's words were "greeting card," illustrated by a severed head in a box. My personal favorite was Democracy--showing the words "voting booth" and a bed.

GQ and TheNew York Times ran an amazing spread that featured citizens walking through the riotous streets of Rome with not-so-ordinary thoughts. A husband and wife are walking hand in hand; the wife is labeled "cheating on husband with forbidden love" and the husband carries a sack labeled "forbidden lover's head." Young boys are labeled as pawns; a young girl is "already plotting to overthrow her mother" and "political alliances [are] forming" beneath the sheets.

Online ads mimicked the print ads, varying from a floater that featured a severed head in a box that you could send to a friend, or an interstitial featuring a moving Rome DVD box that gets stabbed.

Heavy.com and ifilm went a step further by having a letter in their company logos stabbed by a "Rome" dagger. Further "Rome" information was placed off to the side and brought visitors to Amazon.com.

Watch your back.