Amidst the pandemic, Navarasa came as a ray of hope for the talents in the Tamil film industry which was struggling with the lack of opportunities.

As an emotionally stimulating anthology that it was, it also helped Netflix up their regional content game.

Netflix wanted to showcase itself as home to the best of Tamil Content while celebrating the Tamil Film Industry and its foundation on the nine emotions.

The objective of the campaign was to:

Celebrate Tamil Cinema

Reach a focused set of Tamil Audience

Reach a wider audience who might be interested in the title

Use innovation that gets the audience talking and feels excited

9 Stories. 9 Emotions. 9 Films. One Heart.

Netflix decided to amp up the regular review format to do the World’s First Emotional Review for Navarasa.

While the series started as well as ended on an emotional high, the viewers felt a range of emotions throughout the films.

What was better than validating those emotions one experienced? Netflix roped in some of the best Tamil content creators including Alexander Babu, Mervyn Rozz, Jagan Krishnan and Kishen Das.

A bunch of comics and actors, immensely loved and followed by Tamilians in the region and across the globe, came together to discuss the actual emotions they experienced while watching the films, using a brainwave sensing headset.

This review was done to celebrate the cinematic marvel that Navarasa truly is and how Tamil Cinema, a matter of pride for Tamilians, uses the 9 emotions beautifully as the very foundation of an industry.

The EEG headset mapped the alpha, beta and gamma brainwaves of the viewer in real time.

The data collected was used to measure the emotional connect of the viewer on 2 parameters:

Feelings Film – The films they emotionally connected with the most

Feelings Moment – The moments in a film where their emotions spiked.

Involving Tamil Comics and Actors and roping in Alexander Babu, popular in the Tamil content space, to host the show, Netflix wanted to engage the young Tamil audience on social media.

Tamil influencers love to have an opinion on every piece of Tamil content. A standard review was anyway expected from them, but Netflix decided to take that a notch above.

While the influencers did not have the access to the data, Netflix tried to create a fun banter where the creators tried to guess and talk about the films in the process.

The filter prompted the fans to enact the 9 emotions of Navarasa.

As the user posed, the filter captured their expressions and voila!

The output was the user’s own version of Navarasa poster’s key art featuring themselves.

The filter went live on Netflix’s Instagram channel to drive user generated content for the title shortly after the release of the platform’s most awaited show.

The activity aimed at reaching a diverse and wide set of audience through the campaign.

The activity reached over 40 influencers across the Tamil speaking diaspora, who used the filter and posted their version of the Navarasa poster.

The activity was followed by a frenzy of fans sharing their versions of the poster. Social media was flooded with conversations around Navarasa and the title stayed on No. 1 trending in India on Netflix for 4 straight weeks.