Why is this work relevant for Social & Influencer?

We took popular Indian influencers and celebrities, who made a mark last year, and added them into fan favourite, iconic moments of Netflix content from 2021. With state-of-the-art VFX, we sent India’s biggest crypto influencer into the Money Heist bank. A reality show superstar, famous for getting ousted from Bigg Boss, shared her grievances with the Devil. A Bollywood hero, who wanted chicken in India’s biggest ever Netflix show, got stuck hunting for eggs in Red Notice. And an actor turned saviour, who rescued thousands during India’s Covid 19 lockdown, stepped into Stranger Things to save the kids.

Background

The world thought 2021 was going to be a great year but as it turned, we were all wrong. 2021 was a plot twist no one saw coming. It was also a year no one wanted to look back on. But Netflix did. They wanted to create a year-end showcase of all the incredible content they’d created and take a fun rewind on the year gone by. The key goals of the campaign were to: - Drive the Big Conversation - Make the News - Drive Positive Sentiments for Netflix - Become a Pop Culture moment

Describe the creative idea (30% of vote)

2021 was a year no one asked for, so to close out the year we decided to give our fans everything they’ve ever asked for. By trolling our own biggest hits from the year gone by. Bollywood superstars became Hollywood baddies, real-life heroes became reel-life heroes and reality show stars took over some Netflix real estate. In a year filled with plot twists, we dropped the biggest one of all just as the year came to a close. Letting our viewers know that we always had a surprise in store and a whole year’s worth of plot twists ready to go…in 2022.

Describe the strategy (20% of vote)

Our target audience were users who were aware of Netflix’s content and were actively or had at some point been a user of the platform. This audience was highly engaged with both our content and our platforms, thus providing us the most receptive audience for a 2021 retrospective. We chose to release the film across Netflix’s social handles and owned platforms. We also leveraged the star power and reach of the celebrities and influencers we had in the film by releasing shorter snippets on their individual social media handles. By creating a film that trolled our own content with jokes and context from the year gone by, we created the perfect in-joke, making our audience feel like insiders. Using iconic scenes from Netflix shows and recreating them with influencers and celebrities, we took moments they loved and gave them a brand new spin that was inherently shareable.

Describe the execution (20% of vote)

We didn’t just rewind to our biggest hits from 2021, we recreated them with cutting edge, seamless VFX that put some of India’s most popular celebrities and influencers right in the middle of the action without changing a single thing the original characters were saying. We parsed through thousands of hours of Netflix footage to find scenes that would allow us to write in a character and change the meaning and the plot of an iconic and instantly recognizable scene. Even with these restrictions, we still managed to recreate moments from across the Netflix library that the Indian internet would ‘lol’ at and love. The Playback 2021 video went live across all of Netflix India’s owned channels at 11 am on the 22nd December, 2021

List the results (30% of vote)

The teaser post alone got 51k+ views on YouTube, 570k+ views on Instagram and 12k+ views on Facebook. The main AV of the PlayBack Video got 872k+ views on YouTube, 870k+ views on Instagram and 1.6mn+ views on Facebook. The influencer engagement with only static posts on their respective channels got over 1.28 mn likes across channels and engaged over 36,544 fans. The individual snippets of the videos on the respective artists’ channels got over 16.6 mn views and engaged over 60,768 fans. The campaign drove positive sentiments across platforms and gathered a lot of press coverage from leading publications including Hindustan Times, News18, Indian Express, Times of India, Republic World, Economic Times, etc. Netflix PlayBack Video 2021 became the perfect way to close out the year.