Netflix ‘Bird Box Challenge’ Entertainment Netflix Australia
The Brief
Bird Box is one of Netflix’s blockbuster movie titles, where the characters must try and survive in a post-apocalyptic world in which they are unable to use sight. Ahead of its release, our task was to promote the film within Australia in a way that would generate mass awareness, word of mouth and ultimately drive viewership.
OUR INSIGHT
In our research, we identified a strong correlation between fans of the sci-fi/thriller genre and gaming, where people love watching others perform extraordinary feats.
The IDEA
To raise awareness of the film among gaming communities, we challenged four high-profile Australian gamers to survive their favourite games blindfolded.
To kick off the #birdboxchallenge, we briefed the 4 influencers – Chinglish, GeekGG, Artemis, and PiG – along with key gaming press by sending out an apocalypse-style survival kit that included an official briefing and Bird Box blindfold, plus a number of essential survival items featured in the movie.
We challenged the gamers to replicate the film’s narrative and broadcast their blindfolded gameplaying experience live on Twitch. The gamers pre-promoted the stream via their social channels calling on their fan communities to guide them every step of the way. If they removed their blindfold at any point during the challenge, they would ‘die’ – just like in the movie.
Once the gamer completed the challenge, they then called on their fan community to see if they could do better using the #BirdBoxChallenge hashtag.
RESULTS
Gamers tuned in
The Challenge got 123,000 views, generating over 500,000 minutes of content watched across the gamers’ Twitch channels.
Gamers loved it
Sentiment was overwhelmingly positive with fans providing support to the game play and cheering on the gamers.
Emotes usage skyrocketed
The custom emotes proved a popular inclusion and were used frequently by the fans of each gamer.