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.