86 m

contacts across all channels

3.8 m

streams on the ZDF streaming portal

+421%

increase in streams compared to other mystery formats

Agency

Mediaplus
 

Client

ZDFneo

Year

2024

Overview

For fans of romance and mystery alike, the ZDFneo series "Love Sucks" brought together two contrasting target audiences with distinct media consumption habits. At Mediaplus, we developed a context-sensitive media strategy featuring two parallel, audience-specific immersive experiences that converged in a nationwide Halloween roadblock. The result: 86 million contacts and a 421 percent increase in views on the ZDF streaming portal.

Challenge

Two Worlds, One Goal

Fear or love? Mystery fans and romance fans are wired completely differently - and this applies as much to their preferences as to their daily media consumption. The ZDFneo series *Love Sucks* combines both genres in a single storyline, thereby presenting a unique challenge for communication.

What was needed, therefore, was a well-conceived media strategy with maximum contextual sensitivity: each target group had to be engaged within the environments they naturally frequent in their daily lives, using the appropriate tone and the right channels for each. How can two contrasting worlds of experience be combined into a single campaign that ultimately brings both strands together to a common climax without alienating either target group?

Solution

Two Target Groups, One Campaign

Mediaplus developed two parallel narrative worlds, each precisely tailored to its respective target group, with its own touchpoints, tone of voice and storytelling drawn from the everyday media landscape.

Romance fans encounter "Love Sucks" while swiping on Tinder, via DOOH messaging on their way to a date, and through cinema trailers, social media ads, and memes. Mystery fans experience suspense through elaborately produced CGI stunts, vampire-themed escalators, large-scale projections on castles, and Europe’s largest Halloween event- all underpinned by cohesive vampire branding.

Both strands converge at the emotional heart of the campaign: a national Smart TV roadblock on October 31, the day when fear and love meet on screen. In doing so, Mediaplus delivered a media strategy that brought both target groups together seamlessly and in a context-sensitive manner.

Result: The campaign generated 86 million contacts and boosted views on the ZDF streaming portal by 421 percent compared to similar mystery formats.

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"With 'Love Sucks', we proved that seemingly incompatible target groups can, in fact, come together – if you reach them where they feel emotionally at home.
Through parallel storytelling, we developed – together with ZDF – a dual audience approach that couldn’t have been more different, and that’s precisely why it was so successful."


Victoria Wissmann
Client Lead for ZDF
Mediaplus

KEY TAKEAWAYS

#1

Audience-specific storytelling across two emotional worlds.

#2

Context-sensitive media targeting with maximum relevance

#3

421 percent more streams, strong impact at the finale.

More Cases from Mediaplus

About Mediaplus

Mediaplus is one of the largest independent media agencies in Europe and part of the Serviceplan Group — an integrated communications network headquartered in Munich. Founded in 1983, the agency group today brings together around 2,200 specialists across more than 20 wholly owned offices in Europe as well as markets in Asia, the Middle East, and North America. Through partner locations, Mediaplus maintains a presence at 42 sites worldwide. Its service portfolio spans Media Strategy & Innovation, Media Planning & Buying, Data & AI, Performance Marketing, Advertising Technologies, and Commerce & Retail Media. Through its group-wide AI framework House of AI, Mediaplus combines proprietary data models with deep market expertise to deliver measurable brand growth for its clients. Mediaplus has repeatedly been ranked among the leading independent media agencies in both the WARC Media 100 and the RECMA Quality Ranking, and was named Media Agency of the Year at the German Media Awards for the fifth time in 2026.

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Sabine Rössing
Mediaplus
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FAQs

For opposing target groups such as romance and mystery fans, a two-pronged approach is worthwhile instead of a single standard approach. For "Love Sucks," Mediaplus developed two parallel experiential worlds tailored to each specific audience: distinct touchpoints, a unique tone of voice, and storytelling designed to integrate seamlessly into the target group's everyday media consumption. Romance fans were engaged via Tinder and digital out-of-home (DOOH) displays while en route to dates, while mystery fans were reached through CGI-driven spectacles and Halloween-themed activations. Both strands subsequently converged in a unified national Smart TV roadblock. This transforms audience diversity into a campaign strength rather than a challenge.

Context-sensitive media targeting involves delivering advertising messages at the precise moment and within the specific environment where they are most relevant to the target audience. Mediaplus consistently applied this principle for "Love Sucks": romance fans encountered the series while swiping on Tinder, via DOOH messaging on their way to dates, or through trailers during movie nights. Mystery fans experienced the brand through CGI stunts, vampire-themed escalator takeovers, and an elaborate Halloween event. Because the outreach aligned with the audience's specific media consumption moments, the campaign felt personal rather than forced, resulting in a 421 percent increase in views on the ZDF streaming portal compared to similar mystery titles.

A cross-media roadblock concentrates multiple channels on a single, shared event at a scheduled time. In “Love Sucks”, the two parallel campaign storylines for romance and mystery fans came together on October 31st in a national smart TV roadblock, the day on which fear and love met in the program. This shared climax focused the attention of both target audiences squarely on the ZDF streaming portal.