The Umbrella Academy was an unknown Netflix Original, devoid of major star power based on relatively unknown source material, a comic written by Gerard Way (lead singer of My Chemical Romance).

Our brief was to launch the show in the Philippines to an audience that had little, to zero knowledge of it and its characters.

Without access to the usual marketing collateral or show talent, we were tasked to create an experience that introduced the show’s themes, plot and characters, powered by Netflix’s in-market partner companies SMART, PLDT and LG.

Our primary focus was to grow the Netflix user base through:

Social Media Impressions

Media/Influencer Attendance & Participation

Overall Audience Attendance & Interaction

We needed to give audiences a reason to watch and talk about the show. Position it as a fresh take on superheroes; each with unique stories, backed by a rich narrative, to deepen category and brand awareness.

The Umbrella Academy features 7 unique siblings with super powers who have to set aside their differences and work together to save the world.

Playing on the Pinoy obsession with social media, we found 7 super Filipino influencers who personified the Umbrella Academy’s 7 superheroes and challenged them to complete tasks with the help of their followers, unlocking plot twists and coming together in 1 super party.

The live experience brought these diverse influencers together to solve a common challenge, giving us an avenue to drive awareness with our influencers’ audiences about the diverse range of characters (and their powers), providing an easy entry to an otherwise intimidatingly complex show.

Our target audience was social savvy 18 to 35-year-old Filipinos, in a very cluttered market. The Philippines has the largest users of social media in the world with an average daily dwell time of 4.2 hours making it hard for them to switch off. To connect with our audience we needed to make sure our activation existed in the physical world but played pre-dominantly across social media.

Knowing this, we identified influencers as an effective channel to drive hype with this audience. However the show’s premise seemed too niche for any one particular influencer (and their audience) to be right.

We focused on the more easily understood traits of the individual characters in the show. This led us to pair each character to a different influencer, multiplying the breadth of our appeal by 7 and reaching audiences we would otherwise struggle to engage.

We built a socially-connected activation in Manila comprised of 7 unique sets, containing tasks and elements related to our 7 heroes which our 7 super influencers had to escape from to join the super party and see a preview of the show.

To unlock their room, our 7 local heroes (influencers) had to use their characters superpower in harmony with Netflix’s partners (PLDT and LG) super-tech and their super fans through Instagram live. We triggered screens to reveal video clues, audio equipment to play musical hints and our super-followers gave instant assistance through our partners (PLDT) super-fast network.

Over 100 micro and mid-tier influencers attended, accompanied by fans and media. They followed live posts, assisting our heroes in solving puzzles whilst posting about their experiences to their combined social following of 3.9 million.

These whole set came together to form the iconic Umbrella from The Umbrella Academy logo.

The campaign created digital ripples across social media by utilising influencers with individual follower numbers ranging from 5,000 to 2.7 million. The activation was completely constructed to be digitally amplified and connected to social media at all times.

Our main objective was to drive total awareness of the show and introduce themes and character traits to a largely unaware audience. Using varied influencers, we were able to target seven unique audience groups and amplify this by a wider social media following comprised of our Nano Influencer’s fans.

We had a combined total of 7.9 million social reach, which resulted in three times more social engagement when compared to any other Netflix event-based campaign. We also earned over 100+ online and press articles acknowledging our event as a success which equates to $493k in earned media.