Original Contents, Celebrities and Proximity. How Netflix Spain used Instagram to Bring its Catalogue to Young People during the Pandemics

Abstract

This study focuses on how Netflix Spain harnessed Instagram to acquaint young people with its catalogue during the Covid-19 pandemic, with the sudden increase in OTT consumption. This led Netflix Spain to adapt its social media strategies and production release dates to a situation without parallel and in the face of intense competition. We analyze the messages during the state of alarm in Spain (from 15 March to 21 June of 2020), when Netflix was the most consumed OTT service. Netflix promoted recently released productions and used proximity strategies, both to GenZ and to Spanish audience, such as toning down with humor the daily problems of lockdown, using juvenile slang (“crush”, “shipping”), referring to the habits of young people (taking selfies, sending audio messages) and using the social media of the cast of their most popular series, promoting them as “Netflix celebrities” and emphasizing their good-looks and sexual attractive.

Humour as an advertising resource: memes at the service of brands

“…The study variables taken into account to analyse each meme are listed in Table 1. Bassat, 2014;Fernández-Gómez et al, 2023) We employed a statistical analysis using the SPSS software package version 25.0. To answer RQ2 and RQ3, a chi-square test was performed to analyse the relationship between the dependent variables (communication objective, argumentation, brand traits, creative resources) and the independent variables (meme intention and incidence of Shakira's song).…”

(Auto)influencers y ficción: la prescripción de series españolas de Netflix por parte de actrices y actores

“…La comunicación que lleva a cabo Netflix en sus canales digitales ha sido ampliamente estudiada (Cestino, 2021;Martín-Quevedo et al, 2021;Fernández et al, 2022;Moreno y Moreno, 2022). La difusión de contenidos relacionados con las series propias, el uso de un lenguaje juvenil, el recurso al humor y la introducción de llamadas a la acción para fomentar la participación hacen que Netflix reciba una elevada interacción del usuario en redes sociales (Fernández-Gómez y Martín-Quevedo, 2018).…”

“…A partir del estudio de los mensajes difundidos por Netflix durante el estado de alarma en España en 2020, en el que Netflix fue la plataforma de streaming más consumida, Fernández-Gómez et al (2023) evidenciaron las estrategias de proximidad empleadas por Netflix para acercarse a las generaciones más jóvenes, con el recurso a bromas sobre los problemas cotidianos del confinamiento, referencias a hábitos propios (hacerse selfies o mandar audios) o las referencias en sus publicaciones a los perfiles en redes de los actores de sus series.…”