Episode 83 - Netflix Plane Hijack Ad Reviewed by Sky UK, AffiliateINSIDER and Reckitt
In this week’s Advertisers Watching Ads, the ad chosen by Contagious is a gripping immersive experience, the Netflix Plane Heist Ad.
The brand went in an interesting direction, organising the premiere of Blood Red Sky as a plane hijack with influencers on board, all controlled by Twitch users. This works on different levels and certainly draws attention, but is the ad clean on what it’s selling?
What’s the impact on the next generation of consumers? Does the metaverse approach fly high or flop?
See what our guests Tim Hole (Innovation Coach at Sky UK), Lee-Ann Johnstone (CEO and Founder of AffiliateINSIDER) and Cicero Hennemann (Head of Digital Hub in Western Europe for Reckitt) had to say about it and watch the full clip in the latest episode.
Transcript
The following transcript is automatically generated so may not be 100% accurate, but will give you a good idea of what was discussed.
Tom Ollerton 0:06
Hello and welcome to Advertisers Watching Ads. My name is Tom Ollerton. I'm the founder of Automated Creative, and this is a weekly show where brands watch other brands' ads and discuss what's good and bad about them. We're brought to you as ever by contagious.com, so please go and check those guys out after the show have helped choose this week's ad. So before we see this week's ad, let's meet this week's guests.
Tim Hole 0:29
I'm Tim Hole and I am an Innovation Coach at Sky UK.
Lee-Ann Johnstone 0:32
Hi, my name is Lee-Ann Johnstone, and I'm the CEO and founder of AffiliateINSIDER.
Cicero Hennemann 0:37
Hi, I'm Cicero. I'm Head of the Digital Hub in Western Europe for Reckitt.
Tom Ollerton 0:41
What a diverse panel. This is going to be very interesting, and what an ad! Let's have a look at it.
Tim, what do you think about the first time you saw it?
Tim Hole 2:45
What's not to love? What is not to love? You know, for anyone that's been to Rocky Horror Picture Show, Sing-Along Frozen that I went to with my daughter when she was six. All this immersive stuff like it's, it's so much fun. And with the things that are going on at the moment with the Metaverse, things like that, it's clear that there's a playground here for the two dimensional to become something that we can reach out and touch and smell and see, other the sounds with. I'm envious. I wanted to be one of those people on the plane.
Tom Ollerton 3:13
How about you, Lee-Ann? Were you swept up in the creativity of it all?
Lee-Ann Johnstone 3:16
Well, as an acquisition marketer, I mean, it's every marketer's dream, right? 150 influencers, no fees and 3 million people watched your, your content. I mean, what's not to love about it? The genius behind it is, is it's simple, but it's so effective, and it really does highlight the fact that micro content creators can have a huge, massive reach and thinking about how you work with these people to, you know, push brand, push, push messaging, push product is really something that every digital marketing needs to be thinking about right now.
Tom Ollerton 3:46
Cicero, are you equally swept up in the joyous influence in this?
Cicero Hennemann 3:51
I am, and what a feat to pull the whole thing off, right? And its all live, people participating. Bit of a Hunger Games vibes on, you know, people actually also watching it at the same time. You know, even foster an audience as you, you know, broadcast the event and people participate. It's all-in-one type of event. I was very surprised that I didn't hear about it. I was like watching, I was like, "Why wasn't I invited?"
Tom Ollerton 4:19
So I'm in the uncomfortable position of having to try to find the counterpoint here. And there's a few, right? So first off, no fees. How did, how did that work?
Lee-Ann Johnstone 4:26
Well, I think essentially there were fees, I mean, there was a production fee and there were streaming fees and there were... There were obviously costs associated to this campaign. But I think what they were talking about is that they didn't have to pay the influencers to create this unique content. We do want to think about how do we leverage content and everybody keeps telling us content is king. This really shows how you need to be using free content in order to generate that reach. That, to me, is the most powerful thing that happened in this campaign.
Cicero Hennemann 4:52
I think it was a bit of a humble brag on, on the fees thing, side of things, right? It's like, what an achievement and probably catered to the, to the marketeers, that would watch that rather than the whole action behind it. But I think it's also super interesting how they've been able to do it with Twitch, you know, which is a place that, you know, only the really big brands are playing in. And then you come with this very B movie and you do the whole, you know, live show decision making in there. It becomes, you know, multiple things at once that also acquires the admiration I think of people that see, wow, that these guys went to the real lengths to to really do this and, you know, prove that they've got a great product behind it.
Tim Hole 5:37
They've got those influencers. They're somehow... Someone's contact book got paid for and they managed to say the right thing to those influencers. I want to see what the messaging look like. They've got those influencers there. It didn't involve them being paid. How did they tie into those influencers passion points? And said, "We're going to give you an experience that you're not going to get anywhere else. You need to come along to this aircraft hangar, middle of nowhere and watch a movie." Or what did they say?
Lee-Ann Johnstone 6:04
It's FOMO and it was curiosity. Two key things that build every human into a follower or a watcher or a lurker. Whatever you want to call us. Again, it comes down to not just what you post, but how you're posting it. Why you're posting it? And that's the real key thing is what was the objective of the campaign? And that was reach. Reach was what they attained.
Tim Hole 6:26
We have to applaud the people who got ready for that event too because hundreds of meetings would have taken place, lots of budgets would have flown around. This looks like it's still kind of a unique thing, and therefore this costs a lot of money involved, a lot of people. You know, when we look at the actual messaging too here, I wasn't sure whether this piece was advertising the experience company that put it on or was it advertising the movie, but there isn't released dates on there, for territories or anything like that. I ended going, "I'm kind of interested in the movie. I'm really interested in the experience. What was I being sold there? What's my action point at the end? Do I click a link, buy a ticket, go somewhere? What was the activation?"
Lee-Ann Johnstone 7:07
Using concepts like this, marketing concepts like this, I think, is very, very important for merging the online and offline experience together, which few brands get right. Recently, something H&M has a shop in the metaverse that they've now created. Zara is doing, you know, trying on... And everybody's exploring and touching this kind of area of digital, but nobody's really getting it right. And I think this did as a starting point.
Tom Ollerton 7:31
Do you think we're going to see these kind of physical things die out as incredible VR, AR experiences are rolled out instead at scale?
Cicero Hennemann 7:40
I think the concept of, you know, of parallel track, right, a Metaverse, already kind of happens with live event, and this is kind of how people want also to interact with these live events. They want to have a little bit of a way to push forward or participate or influence the outcome. And I think that's also part of where we will see more experimentation. How can people who are not there physically influence the outcomes and feel like they belong, that they've done something or they voted in?
Lee-Ann Johnstone 8:10
My son loves Bear Grylls, and he can choose on Netflix, whether he goes up the mountain or down the drain or whatever it is. And I mean, it just, it's talking to that next generation of consumer because, you know, he's nine years old and he watches the internet, he watches other people playing on YouTube. We don't let him on Twitch or anything like that, like everything's curated, that he watches. But it's just, it's understanding who's your customer, who's your audience, and what do they want? You know, they didn't necessarily want to go to a website and read a content article and then click a link and purchase something. So how about you using all of these free social media channels to actually leverage your content and push it out so people, to your actual end audience?
Tim Hole 8:52
It's actually, it's telling you how to respond as well. It's telling you're going to be shocked, you're going to scream, you're going to be disrupted. It's telling you what the emotional experience is going to be like. This really seems to really carefully take you in and say, "You're going to have the most amazing time." Even if when you see the film, you'll be like, "Oh, you know, yeah, action movie." Interesting story. Yes, it's alright. You know, but they've taken you to that high pitched of this is what it's going to be like, even if maybe you don't experience that when you go yourself.
Tom Ollerton 9:22
Well, unfortunately, guys, we're at the end of the show. So what I'm going to ask you to do is vote for how good you thought this was. So three, two, one... A four, and a five, and a five, that's incredibly high scoring. Well done Netflix! Brilliant bit of work. Guys, thank you so much for your time. We'll see you all next week.
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