Prime Video is a challenger to Netflix in France. It had yet to release a hit series that would make the French talk. Then one day came the opportunity: a docuseries about the success story of Orelsan, one of France’s most famous rappers, covering 20 years of his life from his struggling days as a teen in the Normandy countryside to its national fame.

The first-of-its-kind intimate docuseries about a contemporary French star, particularly unexpected coming from the uber famous yet very secretive Orelsan.

This exclusive documentary titled “Don’t Ever Show This To Anyone” was Prime Video’s ticket to popular success, a big opportunity to assert its ‘street cred’ in France.

Launching this very French docuseries as a traditional blockbuster wouldn’t make the cut. To win the French hearts, Prime Video had to show it “got it”.

Our ambition was to design a campaign as iconoclast and as authentic as Orelsan himself.

The creative idea was to “sample” the docuseries, with a campaign giving a flavor of Orelsan’s intimate story and bringing to life the journey of this local kid making it to the top in the big city against all odds.

A campaign putting out in the open intimate anecdotes of Orelsan’s life, reflecting the spirit of the show’s somewhat paradoxical title “Don’t Ever Show This To Anyone”: an actual quote from Orelsan in his early days addressing his brother (who directed the documentary in a span of 20 years) when he was juggling between doing music during the day and working part-time as a hotel clerk at night, unaware of the success awaiting him years later.

The PR approach was a classical case of “the medium is the message”.

By putting out in the open intimate anecdotes of Orelsan’s journey in a spectacular and innovative manner, we created the best teasing for a docuseries that would unveil the life of the secretive artist.

Prime Video shared the whole exhibition through a thread on Twitter for it to become a national phenomenon on social media.

And the assets were then used as an additional hook by the brand to promote the show among the main media outlets.

We bought all the billboards along one road only, between Caen, Orelsan’s hometown in the Normandy countryside, and Paris, the city of his national consecration, and designed a bespoke, 245Km long, open-air exhibition.

Thanks to a collaboration with his family and Orelsan himself, we collected never seen before photos from his personal archive and we displayed them on this specific road, following the career timeline of the artist. The closer you got to Paris, the closer you got to the peak of his career.

The campaign ran for one week before the launch of the documentary on Prime Video on October 15, 2021.

And with the help of Prime Video sharing the whole exhibition through a thread on Twitter, it became a national phenomenon on social media.

The campaign generated tons of engagement and PR for the documentary, Orelsan and Prime Video

> 546 articles (press, radio, TV and digital)

> 198MM organic impressions (16MM unique reach) on social networks

> +18,782% increase in conversations about Orelsan (vs. the month before)

The show became Prime Video’s #1 during its first week, and its most viewed show for the whole year of 2021, in all categories, in France, with only 2 months of airing time.

Though subscription figures are undisclosed, we can infer that the documentary reached a wide audience from these proxy metrics during the week of the launch:

> +130% increase in streaming of Orelsan’s album (1.15M streams per day on Spotify)

> 3 Orelsan albums reached Amazon France’s Top 10