The idea was simple: look out for opportunities for the fictional President Underwood to publicly converse with Australia’s Prime Minister. These would be the kind of provocative comments that are typical of Frank’s character, and that drama hungry news hacks wouldn’t be able to resist adding to their stories.

That opportunity landed on March 21, 2016 when the Prime Minister announced that he would dissolve Parliament unless the Senate agreed to pass two controversial bills that he was keen to push through - the boldest and most risky move of his term in government, and one that Frank would be quick to applaud. The House of Cards Twitter account swiftly responded directly to Turnbull with the comment “I admire your methodology Prime Minister. If you don’t like how the table is set, turn over the table”.

In the climate of Australian politics, execution was about waiting for the inevitable moment to react. Party politics was reaching a fever pitch following the latest of four leadership spills in the past five years.

We stayed close to the action, constantly monitoring news and social conversation. Upon the inevitable tipping point with the announcement of the proposed double dissolution we were ready to respond instantly.

As soon as we saw pickup we proceeded to seed the story to media and ensure that the escalating social noise surrounding the tweet was reported in all of the news coverage and commentary following the press conference.

Frank Underwood’s response hit such a nerve amongst Australia’s political pundits that it framed the way that the double dissolution announcement was reported and discussed. The tweet was light-hearted enough to be considered banter, but the significance of Underwood endorsing Turnbull’s decision was an accessible way for Australia’s political journalists to explain the importance of the announcement to mass audiences.

This analogy swept through all major coverage of the press conference and made front page news on Australia’s second largest newspaper, the Daily Telegraph, depicting Malcolm superimposed onto Frank Underwood’s Oval office chair. Overall the story reached over 13 million people which is three quarters of the Australian population, the tweet was engaged with over 26,000 times and it’s success inspired the UK to use a similar tactic to engage with David Cameron several weeks later.