Black Monday
Social media campaign for Showtime's 80s Wall Street comedy
Led art direction for Showtime's Black Monday social campaign — 80s Wall Street comedy with a VHS-tinted, retro aesthetic across organic and paid content.
Every modern social format pushed through a 1980s pipeline — VHS tracking glitches as the transition language, so even a Twitter GIF looks like it was taped off cable.
Create an organic & paid social media campaign that captures the unique voice and tone of the show. Keep the mood humorous, clever & upbeat. The show is a wild 80s Wall Street comedy — the campaign needs to match that energy.
Capitalize & stylize on the show’s era: make the social media content look like it was made in the 80’s. Give everything a tinted, photo-processed look. Basic goofy GFX, VHS aesthetic. Scan lines, tracking artifacts, neon gradients, and retro typography — all applied to modern social formats.
Countdown to Premiere
The rollout opened weeks out: two moody 1988-dated teaser stills of Mo and Keith, then a full Twitter profile takeover with the cast recast as street photography, days before a single episode aired.
Quote Cards, Magazine-Cover Style
In-character quotes dressed as supermarket-checkout magazine covers, shot and typeset like they'd been sitting on a rack since 1988.
Character Intros: The OGs
Each lead got a synthwave poster: a portrait on a sunset grid with a signature prop, a name plate that rolls in, then a cut to footage from the show.
80s Memes
Memes built from 1980s office tech and show footage, each with VHS tracking glitches: a beeper, a fax machine, a protest sign, a villain split-screen and a Mo Monroe poster.
The 80s Treatment
Every asset was processed through a retro lens: VHS color grading, scan lines, tracking glitches, and neon gradients. Polaroids develop on screen, one for each block of episodes.
Swipe-Through Carousels
The nameplate gag ran as a two-slide swipe: Mo Monroe's desk plate reads one way on the first slide, and the second slide reveals the full second line. A second carousel opened on Dawn waking up, then swiped to the morning after.
Selling the Premiere
Countdown content built like era artifacts — a Miami-postcard tune-in for the March 15 season premiere, a fight-card title treatment for the finale push, and a full run of Watch Now teasers counting down the hours.
Episode GIFs, Within Hours of Air
Every week of the season, the best beats of the new episode were cut into shareable GIFs within hours of air — reaction moments, character highlights, and quotable scenes, each stamped with the show's mark and pushed through the VHS pipeline. Distributed on GIPHY, where fans and the cast could grab them mid-conversation.
Legends
A running cast of side-gags that outlived any single episode: a Who Wore It Better bracket, a home-shopping parody selling jeans in a cathedral, a voicemail story with a live poll, and the stunts staged for premiere day.
Cut for the Feed
Episode clips re-framed for Twitter — captioned, cropped, and glitch-wrapped so a scene stopped mid-scroll even with the sound off.
Unit Photos
Behind-the-scenes frames from the Season 2 shoot, stamped with the same 1988 timecode treatment as the rest of the campaign.
Campaign Elements
Black Monday, in motion
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