Once a social welfare center received a distressed call from a 16-year old girl, saying she was being held against her will. Having gotten hold of a mobile phone, the girl tipped off a ranch where base acts against minors, many younger than her, are being committed. A 49-year old man was physically abusing her, and has impregnated her twice in a span of eight months. She reported she was forced to wed this man, who has six other wives, at age 15.

Hence on April 3, 2008, welfare authorities deployed its largest rescue mission yet in Texas, raiding the Yearning for Zion (YFZ) ranch in Eldorado. It was operated by an outmoded Mormon sect called the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, whose cause was to keep plural marriage alive. The incursion produced 437 minors, mostly girls, who at one point or another were forced to copulate with much older men, to sire children. America recoiled at such insular world, at best a holdover of an era not abreast with present sensibilities.

Cable giant HBO, on the prowl for a hit since The Sopranos signed off in 2007, wants to ride on the hype, albeit belated, and bring back Big Love, its drama series about Mormon polygamists. Before it segued into a hiatus in August 2007, the show had been rated its second-highest among female viewers.

But overall in ratings, it’s no Sex and The City, so HBO grappling with an ad campaign this size is explicable. Such marketing is by itself adherent  to HBO standards. Once, the network sent bloodied missives to scores of people for its vampire show, True Blood.

For Big Love, HBO wants to emphasize “Everyone Has Something to Hide,” a campaign slogan to keep up with the show’s secretive characters. Murals and billboards were installed countrywide picturing banal scenes of Americans going about their businesses.

Everything’s not what they seem though. Each billboard has built-in audio jacks, wherein one could just plug their earphones or those provided by HBO contingents. Only then could one know what’s going on in the thoughts of the character at hand, audio clips of their “secrets,” as it were.

BBDO has just floored everyone else for my big love.

In tandem with the Civic Entertainment Group, HBO also delegated 150 individuals to parade around with comic-like thought bubbles telling their supposed secrets.

Big Love premiered its new season on January 18. Bill Paxton reprises his role as Bill Henrickson, the Mormon patriarch with three wives. Jeanne Tripplehorn plays the first, Barbara; Chloe Sevigny as Nicolette; and Ginnifer Goodwin as Margene.

Chloe Sevigny, gifted thespian as she is, could be my biggest watching actor. Beyond that, the show may get no more than my sympathy vote for the advertising effort. Carrying a torch for Big Love could be such a caustic pastime, its plot too alienating even with the tasty voyeurism parlayed by the murals.

Advertising Agency: BBDO New York< USA
Chief Creative Officers: David Lubars, Bill Bruce
Creative Director: Mike Smith
Creative Director / Art Director: James Clunie
Creative Director / Copywriter: Pierre Lipton
Photographer: Brad Harris

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