SCENARIO

It’s 2018 in Italy.

In less than 3 years since its arrival, Netflix has become a true lovebrand.

At the same time, haters have started hitting hard on the streaming giant: is it killing cinema? Is it killing tv? Is it killing your social life?

BRIEF

Our mission was to engage our fans in a conversation that could interest and excite new potential clients, people who might have heard all sorts of things, not necessarily positive, about the service.

OBJECTIVES

Create national buzz and word of mouth around Netflix, leveraging on the polarizing conversations around the brand and turning our enemies into our most precious allies.

Instead of fighting our haters, we decided to give them voice, bringing their ambivalent feelings towards Netflix to the streets.

We decided to send a mysterious and unbranded message in the form of 700 wild posters in Rome and Milan. Two simple words, printed red on black: BASTA NETFLIX, in Italian "Enough With Netflix". The provocation was enough to spark a national debate and a fan uprising. But Basta has a second meaning in Italian, “something is enough” and we patiently waited for fans to pick up on that.

STRATEGY

Through social listening and PR research we realized that, while Netflix fans were in love with the brand, prospect target was actually being exposed to a lot of confusing messages and news: Netflix is killing cinema, Netflix is the enemy of classic television, Netflix is too addictive, etc.

Our target audience was everyone who hadn't already subscribed to the streaming Platform, with a special focus on those we felt were potentially more interesting for the brand: 25-45, males and females alike, with a healthy digital and social life.

Our strategy was to use fans as our most natural ambassadors and use their love for the brand as the best possible selling message to non-fans.

To drive fans to share their love we provoked them with a simple, unbranded, negative message: Basta Netflix. Enough with Netflix.

We decided to only use unbranded wild posting to spread our Basta Netflix message: 700 posters scattered all over Milan and Rome. For a week that was the only piece of the campaign that went on air, reinforcing the mystery behind the ads and fueling social conversation and PR coverage.

After a week, when the conversation had reached its peak and fans had rushed to the support of the brand, we ran a new series of ads for two weeks, billboards and films, again in Rome and Milan, using Basta Netflix this time to introduce Italy to the world of Netfix, its unique features and the resulting behaviours that fans all over Italy had already exposed through spontaneous posts.

The Netflix brand saw a peak of conversation during the weeks of the campaign.

The PR coverage of the teaser and of the following reveal campaign generated more than 21 Million in impressions.

The wild posting teaser alone generated the spontaneous response, mainly through Instagram stories, of thousands of fans, with the campaign achieving a total reach of 51 Mil.

And ultimately, a few haters ended up generating and unprecedented amount of love for the brand, with people still remembering the campaign and linking to the Brand.