No matter where you are from or what language you speak, fans want to learn/speak the language of Narcos.

Combining the universal language of humor with the raunchy dialect of the show we created “Narcos’ Spanish Lessons”. The characters from the show became the tutors in branded content videos. Each character gave a lesson teaching words in Spanish you don’t exactly learn in grammar school. Pardon our “French” while we demonstrate:

Coma mierda (ko-ma-mee-err-dah): eat shit.

Hijo de puta (ee-ho-day-poo-tah): son of a bitch.

Malditos malparidos (mal-dee-tohs mal-pah-ree-dohs): damn bastards.

The first lessons were shared organically on Narcos’ social channels within conversations about the show, or during contextually relevant times. For example, on a Friday afternoon we posted “what to say when your friend bails on your weekend plans”: ‘Malparido’ (‘bastard’).

After releasing a few videos, we asked fans to request some of their favorite lines... and Narcos obliged. A total of nine Spanish lessons were shared over a period of two months.

The content blew up. Completely organic, it generated 30% of engagement across all content posted for Narcos Season 2, even outpacing the paid promotional content. Reflecting on our original goals:

+ Generate excitement and discussion: Over 1.2 million total engagements.

+ Raise awareness of Season 2: Completely organic, the campaign reached 52 million people and generated over 13.3 million views.

+ Grow followers of Narcos social platforms: Narcos saw a follower increase of over 50%, which can be largely attributed to this content series. For example, the day of and day after posting just one lesson, the Facebook page saw an increase of 15,000 likes.

+ Sales: In Q3 of 2016, Netflix added approximately 3.57 million subscribers worldwide, 55% over their target. Narcos Season 2 was named by the CEO as one of the biggest factors of the company’s success in his shareholder address.

Netflix is web-based. It’s streaming. And fans of streaming shows are more likely to have their social media open and active.The Narcos social platforms have over 3.5 million followers who already love the show. That's a lot of free advocacy if we give them something to talk about. The Spanish Lessons campaign interacted with Narcos fans to give them more of the crude, rude show that they love, banking on those fan sharing with potentially new Narcos fans to promote the new season.

While conducting research and social listening from global activity around Narcos Season 1, we found one tiny nugget – one recurring comment from all regions – that inspired the concept for Season 2.

“Watching Narcos has taught me more Spanish than I learned in high school.”- @lauren_schattle

Fans were loving and discussing how they were learning Spanish from the show, and not just the basic “hola” and “muchas gracias” phrases, but the more realistic and authentically crude language.

“RT if you’ve started thinking random curse words in Spanish after watching Narcos.” - @Vikram_Poddar.

We shared the Narcos Spanish Lessons with fans and like-interested social media users specifically on Twitter where a lot of this conversation was already happening. We also shared it on Facebook because we already had a large following, knowing that it would organically reach millions more users through follower engagement – particularly shares and commenting.

The plan was to promote Season 2 of Narcos with a global multicultural campaign. We had to find out what gave Narcos its cross-cultural magnetism across borders. What was that common thread?

Our objective was to take the Narcos story beyond the Netflix platform. Without paid media, create innovative social content that would propel the existing fans to share their Narcos obsession and attract new Narcos fans worldwide.

Specifically:

+ Generate excitement and discussion, KPI: social engagement

+ Raise awareness of Season 2, KPI: reach

+ Grow followers of Narcos social platforms, KPI: follower increase