Netflix had a huge challenge - connecting with the Masculine Mainstream target.

With 55M people, this was the 2nd biggest potential target for Netflix, but also the hardest one to engage.

That's because Netflix couldn't enter the most important territory for the Masculine Mainstream: Soccer. Something aggravated by the main championships being sponsored by Netflix's major competitors.

But an opportunity to step into this territory entered the field: through social listening, we found some tweets about a new team from the Brazilian Northeastern outskirts called TUNTUM. Comparisons between the team's name and Netflix's sound branding, the notorious TUDUM that precedes every Netflix Original, naturally rose.

Netflix had three main objectives then: it had to generate conversations around Tuntum and TUDUM on a cultural level (1) to get them to spread organically (2), so that it could surprise the Masculine Mainstream and entice them to engage with watching Netflix (3).

If people were just joking that Tuntum's name was similar to TUDUM's sound branding, Netflix decided to take the joke seriously.

The Tuntum association meant entering the soccer territory in a way only Netflix could do; with the boldness, courage and creativity so peculiar to the brand.

And then, in an unexpected move, instead of simply making an opportunity post playing with the situation, Netflix – one of the major entertainment companies in the world – became Tuntum Sport Club's official partner, a team that was playing the 4th division of Brazilian soccer.

We closed a sponsorship deal for the whole season – Netflix is Tuntum's sponsor for the entire 2022 season.

Tuntum city has its own slogan, saying "My heart beats 'Tuntum'".

Well, now the world’s biggest streaming says "Netflix's Heart Beats 'Tuntum'"

Netflix had to get closer to the Masculine Mainstream and become a theme in their mouths and keyboards.

These people, besides not having a deep relationship with on demand content and preferring to watch live broadcasts – a speciality of Netflix's competitors –, used to rely on other people's recommendations to watch something (1).

To connect with them, the brand had to generate interesting conversations around TUDUM and Tuntum and make them go viral far beyond Netflix’s owned social media channels, so that the Masculine Mainstream would notice them and engage with the brand.

What would make the difference between a simple reaction to the post that went viral about TUDUM and a subject worthy of reaching Trending Topics was keeping the brand's spirit alive.

PHASE 1 - ANNOUNCING THE SPONSORSHIP - To raise the subject, we believed in the sponsorship's power, with no investment in other paid media.

Netflix just replied to the tweet that made the joke go viral, and soccer fans carried the message further.

PHASE TWO - THE FIRST MATCH AFTER THE DEAL The next match would be broadcasted by none other than Prime Video, one of our major competitors. Amazon's cameras tried to ignore the new Tuntum shirt, but with our logo big on all players' uniforms, we shined for 90 minutes on a huge competitor's platform.

PHASE 3 - SPREADING THE WORD EVEN FURTHER Netflix trusted the power of the sponsorship to let it spread organically. And so it did, through the Tuntum shirt with Netflix’s logo becoming a coveted item and people talking about the sponsorship for long after the game ended.

Some hours after announcing the sponsorship, we became Trending Topics, with 10.2K mentions praising the sponsorship and waiting for Tuntum's next match: The team would play for the Brazilian Cup against the tourney's biggest champion, in their 1rst game after the deal.

We got to 10.29K organic mentions by the MM in 2 days, 2,5x higher than the 6K benchmark.

We reached $5,39 Cost Per Mention, 13,8x less than the goal of $74,40.

The target grew 8.2% from Apr to Jun/2022, 7.3p.p. more than the general viewers.

Going further, we reached these results while investing exclusively in the sponsorship, and with a proposition based on the surprise power to generate conversations organically – which made the relation between cost and reverberation even more surprising, outperforming the goals.