To drive interest in the Narcos Season 3 storyline, shifting it from a program about Pablo Escobar to one about a broad group of drug lords starting with the Cali Cartel, we needed to do a bit of education about what the Cali Cartel actually was.

Unfortunately, facts and figures on their own are hardly intriguing or disruptive. We needed to find a way to get people to notice by giving them context for why they should care. If watching films like Less Than Zero, Pulp Fiction and The Wolf of Wall Street taught us anything, it’s that people do coke in bathrooms.

Our idea? Blo’cation, blo’cation, blo’cation: educate people about cocaine where they’re most likely to do cocaine,

We created a provocative, contextually relevant campaign that spoke to people where they were most likely to find or consume cocaine during the Cali Cartel’s 1990s heyday - the bars and bathrooms of the 160 trendiest clubs and restaurants in New York, Miami, Chicago and Los Angeles.

Bathroom clings and mirrored drink coasters contained life-like images of cocaine lines and rolled up dollar bills or credit cards. The clings educated patrons about the Cali Cartel’s massive scale of operations, power and wealth with lines like “The Cali Cartel built a $200 billion dollar empire one line at a time” and “Here’s in the 90s? There’s an 80% chance this powder came from the Cali Cartel” while the coasters offered a bit more cheek to the campaign with statements like “Need a great pick up line?”

The four-week campaign launched August 31st, one day before Narcos Season 3 premiered on Netflix.

The campaign got people buzzing immediately. Venues reported that clings were disappearing as quickly as they were installed and coasters were being kept as souvenirs.

Objective: Generate consumer and media buzz

Given the limited presence and the fact that materials disappeared shortly after installation, the campaign delivered 8.5 million in-venue impressions and an additional 190 million earned media impressions from notable media pickup including local news coverage in markets outside where the campaign ran.

Objective: Migrate existing fans and drive new viewers

According to Nielsen, 27.2 million Netflix subscribers tuned in for Season 3 during the first week of launch, this was XX% higher than previous seasons and nearly 3 times the viewers of Orange is the New Black Season 5 and Season 1 of Stranger Things - making it one of Netflix’s most-watched original programs of 2017.