The situation: AppleTV+ was lacking awareness in an incredibly crowded streaming category. Young people especially were unaware that AppleTV+ has award-winning movies and some of Hollywood’s biggest stars.

The brief was synonymous with the main objective - reach these online-dwelling Gen Z entertainment enthusiasts and raise their awareness and interest in AppleTV+.

Enter, Timothée Chalamet. He’s like a young Leo DiCaprio (they’re friends, even). He’s been in huge, successful films, plus he’s one of the most discussed young celebrities on the internet and has a combined social following of over 20 million followers. Anything he does or says is consumed and discussed across platforms.

That’s where his influential envy comes in. We show Gen Z what makes Timothée jealous with a methodical breakdown of the best AppleTV+ content. The pensive, brooding, moody young man lives up to his legend, leaving Gen Z social media buzzing about AppleTV+ and this film.

The world’s hottest streaming service has attracted the envy of the world’s hottest young star.

Taking into consideration both the timing of the launch — during NFL playoffs, and circling award season and Paris fashion week — and the nature of the campaign — rolling out over multiple weeks and platforms —, we determined that creating a single moment in the press around the :90 sec hero launch film would give us the biggest opportunity to generate the most earned media in PR.

We did this by capitalizing on the speculation from Timothée’s Instagram story teaser and seeding several stories with entertainment and advertising reporters with exclusive content and hinting at upcoming Apple TV+ titles in the spot like Killers of the Flower Moon. This rolling embargo method allowed us to create a single moment while sustaining conversation throughout the campaign’s lifecycle. We then conducted a second round of pitching, following up with all of the campaign pieces to show the breadth of the work. 

Timothée Chalamet was our media channel, using his social presence to amplify our reach. The campaign launched organically across his Instagram and Twitter handles, a direct line into the targeted Gen Z social audience.

To put a long tail on the campaign and maximize the investment in Timothée, 3 films were created and launched across social media. The first “Call Me with Timothée Chalamet.” A week later, “A Taste with Timothée Chalamet” was launched. A week after that a third and final film, “Ladybug with Timothée Chalamet” was teased and released.

“Apple, call me” became a rallying cry.

Fans went crazy, re-creating our films with dolls, creating fan edits, making art, and breaking down outfits.

Well after the campaign ended, thousands of comments continued the conversation as fans asked for Apple to call Timothée Chalamet and speculated as to which Apple TV+ show would land him.

The resulting campaign was a success. Our attempts at reaching a huge, broad audience paid off with a recorded 75 million organic views in 10 days alone. Also bringing in 36.5 thousand mentions, gaining Super Bowl attention without even airing in the Super Bowl.

Fans couldn’t get enough of our films, using them to create hundreds of pieces of fan art and fan edits. The top 10 performing fan edits garnered 6 million views on their own.

Our launch post became the #1 all time post for the Apple TV+ Instagram and Twitter profiles. On IG alone, the film got 7.2 million views and 2.2 million engagements, bringing our total engagements to 6.3 million for the whole campaign.