Consumers love their Netflix shows so much that they've created elaborate rituals around watching. They order specific foods, adjust their lighting just so, silence their phones—and often share these rituals on social media.

Informed by social listening, we created the Netflix MakeIt campaign—a series of of DIY projects inspired by users' watching rituals and designed to deliver the ultimate watching experience. We launched the campaign with the first innovation: The Switch.

With one press, The Switch dims the lights, silences incoming calls, orders takeout, and turns on Netflix—giving fans a shortcut to watching shows on their own terms.

Inspired by Netflix Hack Days and the brand's consumer-centric positioning, we designed the Netflix MakeIt campaign as a DIY series. For each project, we build a prototype that enhances fans' watching experience and invite makers to create their own.

We debuted The Switch, our first installment, at World Maker Faire in NYC on September 26, 2015, demonstrating the gadget for an influential community of makers and tech press.

Simultaneously, we released a video on the MakeIt website, engaging fans to build and customize their own Switch using step-by-step instructions and open-source firmware and schematics. Additionally, we gave fans the opportunity to submit ideas for future MakeIt innovations.

While the project targeted Netflix fans in the maker community, the story was crafted for mainstream appeal.

Within days of the launch, tech press dubbed The Switch the Netflix and Chill Button, resulting in viral attention on social and mainstream media—completely organically.

At World Maker Faire, the conference's 100k+ attendees experienced The Switch first hand. The very first media article about The Switch, Hackaday's The Netflix and Chill Button, picked up on the meme that was in our initial consumer insight. From there, The Switch went viral, expanding beyond tech press and appearing in more than 250 media placements—garnering over 435 million media impressions.

On social, The Switch spread organically. The project was mentioned more than 23,000 times and garnered over 200 million social impressions. Within the first month of launch, The Switch was mentioned 16 times every hour on Twitter with an average of 389 Twitter mentions per day.

The relevance, authenticity, and open-source nature of The Switch resulted in a cultural sensation and further established Netflix as an innovative force in the entertainment industry.