Netflix, the iconic Silicon Valley brand was launched for the first time in France in September 2014. While the arrival of Netflix was highly anticipated by some, others perceived it as a threat or did not know much about the product category. To face those challenges, we came up with a locally tailored strategy and a one-of-a-kind communication campaign focusing on Netflix's unique consumer-centric philosophy. Indeed everything Netflix does is built around the behaviors and needs of its users. To understand the very needs and interests of the French when it comes to their home entertainment routine we created a data-driven strategy and resorted to data through the use of Topics Model : a data mining tool. Our objective was to show to the French that Netflix is a brand for everyone, especially 'for you', and the best solution for their home entertainment because the service gathers all their desires. This is what led to the brand promise of our launch platform: "Netflix, inspired by you".

The insights directly fueled our creative work. For example, each message in our GIFs was data-driven to best meet the French consumer's needs and interests. Thus, they were relevant and people felt truly spoken to.

The French quickly reacted to this initiative by taking photos and videos of the creations and sharing them on the web. Whereas an outdoor campaign doesn't usually end up on the web, our data-driven GIF campaign created a lot of earned media : 90% of it was positive (source : Talkwalker). Our integrated and data-driven campaign marked everyone's mind and highly increased awareness : the brand awareness boomed from 25% to 68% in 3 months and 40% of the French say that 'they know the type of service that Netflix offers' (source: Ipsos). And it strengthened brand love: the Netflix France Twitter account gained 29K followers in 1 day compared to its rival Canalplay (2,5K in a year).

We leveraged Topics Model, a proprietary natural language processing tool developed by us. Topics Model analyzes up to 2 years’ worth of historical conversations on the web to determine the primary discussion themes around Netflix and home entertainment. We first connect to various APIs to collect the public data from social media sources, blogs and forums. Once the data is collected we proceed with a 5 step data cleansing process leveraging various data mining algorithms that have a machine learning component to automatically select conversations most relevant to the brand. After having hand-picked the conversations we finish with a 4 statistical procedures to identify and interpret the topics. This is the stage where the data team worked hand-in-hand with the strategic planning team to better understand the French mindset and the cultural tensions, drivers, and barriers that could influence the customer path.

The unique insights of Topics Model enabled us to dive into the French mindset. We were first able to identify the market opportunity for Netflix in France. There were two primary sets of topic clusters that appeared in our analysis:

• The fears and frustrations of the French around downloading and streaming video content online: “downloading,” “illegal,” “problem,” “why,” “illegally,” “piracy,” “antivirus,” etc…

• The needs of the French with regards to home entertainment: “watch,” “stream,” “full,” “entire,” “free,” etc.

We then dug deeper into these initial findings and were able to determine the 3 fundamental insights that drove our creative strategy:

• The French love culture but they’re among Europe’s biggest pirates

• The French love innovation but they’re skeptical of what’s new

• The French love revolutions but they’re very conservative

This lead to the creation of our creative strategy called “Inspired by You,” where Netflix is a platform where everything is designed around the consumer. There is no longer a need to adapt to home entertainment, because it adapts to you. Our first creative execution of this creative strategy was a creative revolution with a GIF campaign where we addressed the frustrations/concerns of the French and answered their needs through a series of digital GIF billboards. Every GIF created was directly linked back to an insight found using the Topics Model.