Telemundo’s hit franchise La Reina del Sur was celebrating its first season's 10th anniversary at the time of its third season’s launch, and the company wanted to celebrate this milestone. Telemundo is one of the two major Spanish-language broadcast channels catering to U.S. Hispanic audiences, and with this branded content we wanted to show audiences why music is important and how this season is special, connecting with viewers through the sounds of their own countries in the series’ original score. “An Unforgettable Voyage” documents how original music was created for each country this season travels to. To create this original score, Telemundo made an important investment, bringing onboard Latino Hollywood composer, Carlos Rafael Rivera (The Queen's Gambit, Godless), who has special relevance for the Hispanic community, and the Miami Symphony Orchestra, rooted in the largely Hispanic community of Miami, while recording in historic Miami Criteria Recording Studios (Encanto, Hotel California).

This piece was created as a streaming episode, combining documentary with entertainment. Its length and rhythm were considered to keep audiences engaged – joining scenes from the series with interviews, sounds, and actions in a way that would give space to the ideas and to the reflections being presented, while also moving its audience. The documentary discusses the process of creating a musical score and immerses audiences in the emotions it can transmit, making audiences feel they are traveling with La Reina del Sur on her journey through Latin America in this season. The piece was intended to live beyond the series’ premiere, transcending this moment, and live on to show how music can make a difference in a fictional story.

Telemundo Global Studios and NBCUniversal Global Distribution came together to develop a strategy for this piece. With an executive producer for this documentary from each department, both business units came together to promote Telemundo’s interests. The team pitched a project produced for a segment of its Hispanic TV audience: a behind the scenes piece designed as a documentary, with insight into a series’ original score production. The piece geared towards a younger skewing audience – La Reina del Sur’s core audience, online and on digital (Telemundo.com/Telemundo App/NBC One App/NBC.com) — would serve to promote tune-in to the premiere of La Reina del Sur Season 3, featuring talent of interest to viewers including award-winning Latino composer Carlos Rafael Rivera and lead actress Kate del Castillo. An exclusive premiere of the documentary was held at the Miami Symphony Orchestra headquarters to promote the documentary launch. Media, influencers, musicians, and producers were invited.

The strategy of programming this piece as a streaming content was successful in bringing this documentary to new audiences and audiences who may otherwise not have had insight into what goes into the production of an original score. In this way, the story behind the music became an important added value that audiences began to consider. On Telemundo Youtube/Telemundo English Youtube the piece obtained 136K+ views alone. It was also published on Telemundo.com and Telemundo App, and our parent company NBCUniversal picked up the piece to publish to a wide audience on its NBC One App and NBC.com – making possible an additionally wide reach. Across the company apps and web the piece obtained 190K+ views and counting – a satisfactory reach for our marketing objectives.