Cannes Lions
VML, Kansas City / NETFLIX / 2016
Overview
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Credits
Description
We wanted to be part of this polarized scenario through two of Brazil’s most important and iconic national magazines, true symbols of this left versus right debate: Carta Capital and Veja. They are famous for being on opposite sides since forever and their readers are very aware of that.
Each magazine prepared a fake cover on Frank Underwood portraying him as a real life politician and accordingly to each’s point of view.
After we posted on our channels a picture with the two fake covers side by side, the magazines posted their respective fake covers on their social channels like it was the real cover of the week.
We invited regional newspapers to do the same, always being true to their political orientation and stimulating polarized opinions.
It all happened during only one day, which was the day of the series’ launch and also the day magazines reveal their next covers.
Execution
As we needed all of the publishers to be very true to their core identity and political orientation, we asked the newsroom of each publisher to create the covers. To keep this even closer to the real deal, we asked them to post the covers exactly at the time they usually post.
That resulted in very relatable content and the audience had a lot of fun interacting with it. Some people commented as if the character was real. Some people thought Frank Underwood was actually the American president or created crazy conspiracy theories about Brazil’s political moment.
So we played the role of Frank Underwood and we broke in the publishers fanpage to interact with the users and make the conversation bigger and bigger.
Outcome
In only 1 day of stunt Netflix reached at least 2,3 million people organically with almost 270,000 interactions.
Engagement on all the posts was massive – people commented, interacted, shared and even explained to some who started believing the covers were real.
Most publishers’ reach and engagement has doubled. Veja was even better with 6 times more reach!
The stunt day was the day Netflix’s Facebook Page and Instagram profile acquired the largest numbers of new fans in 2016.
The repercussion was awesome. We had very intense media coverage on the stunt in Brazil. One of the most important radios talked about the opposing covers for five minutes.
People started producing memes and versions of House of Cards trailers using real Brazilian politicians. Even international publishers such as NY Times, BBC and Forbes started to compare Brazilian politics to House of Cards.
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