Situation

The former President of Argentina, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner was one of the most controversial in its history. Her abuse of presidential broadcasts stands characterized her highly controversial time in government. Although the law states that they should only be used to address the nation in critical situations, she made more than 121 national broadcasts in the 8 years that her government lasted. That is over 4,600 minutes of interruptions talking about not so important things. To differentiate himself from his predecessor, the current president has not made any in 3 years.

Brief

Create devise a campaign that continues to focus on the constant similarities between House of Cards and the Argentine politics.

Objectives

Generate buzz around House of Cards’ final season.

Develop a game changing media campaign.

Year after year, the similarities between House of Cards and Argentina's political history became more evident. Particularly the relationship between Claire Underwood and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner: Both married with former presidents, who died shortly after leaving office. Both assume the role of president for this loss, and of course many acts of corruption.

To promote the sixth and final season we used one of the most controversial political symbols: The national broadcast.

On November 2 at 20:55 Claire Underwood spoke to millions of Argentinians simultaneously through 5 television channels, 6 national radio stations, 3 regional social handles from Netflix and 1 digital out of home at the “Obelisco” located in the center of the city. After 3 years of silence, the national broadcasts were back.

National broadcasts in Argentina are a key element of politics. Especially, during the government of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (a woman who has a lot in common with Claire Underwood), who abused of them, having spoken more than 4600 minutes during her presidency.

This insight led us to announce House of Cards’ final season with a campaign that impacted all media across selected channels, the way it would with news of a political nature in Argentina.

Taking into account that the actual president didn’t even make one national broadcast in the past 3 years, we knew Claire’s broadcast would make a huge impact.

We made prime time media buys that interrupted usual programming (as natural as national broadcasts often do to heighten the drama of Claire’s announcement.

In Claire’s presidential broadcast, we used a never before seen scene from the last season.

We wrote a script, about one of the most controversial events of the series: Frank’s death. In it, we set up the question of whether Claire had anything to do with it.

Then, Claire’s official dubber from Netflix and the sign language interpreter from Casa Rosada (Official Residence and workplace of the President of Argentina) helped us to deliver this message. Creating an identical national broadcast to the one that all Argentinians know.

To develop it we bought the prime time of Argentina’s top media TV channels (Telefé, Canal 13, Canal 9 América, LN+), radio stations (Vorterix, Aspen, Rock & Pop, Metro, continental, Los 40), and one digital billboard in the city centre of Buenos Aires. Also, we shared it at the same time in Facebook Netflix Latam and Netflix Argentina and Youtube Netflix Latam.

With just one video that aired just once, simultaneously across the country, we were able to generate a conversation across social media that had a huge impact.

After 3 years without national broadcasts of any kind, Claire Underwood’s presidential announcement in Argentina surprised prime time media on November 2 and reached more than 5.5 million people.