With the stakes crescendoing following Season 2’s cliffhanger, Netflix’s Ozark needed a strong social rollout ahead of Season 3 to become more than a critical darling.
With the return of acclaimed performers for an grittier, darker and action-packed third act, the social rollout had to tease out the season’s themes and navigate an ultra-short lead time, with a global shock that affected the timing of the marketing rollout.
Our phase 1 creative ramped up the drama and brought viewers into a pivotal setting of the third season: the Byrde family’s new riverboat casino.
With date reveal easter eggs embedded in custom-fabricated cards, the first Ozark S3 teaser video established anticipation, racking up the most video views for any owned post on Instagram (at the time) with over 64k views.
To connect further with the third season’s gambling theme and coincide with the season’s release date, the second phase of our social rollout hinged on the national trend of gambling on the NCAA basketball March Madness tournament.
Then COVID-19 hit.
With the threat looming ever larger, the basketball tournament was cancelled, leaving Ozark in need of a completely new plan for phase two, less than a month before launch.
Social listening revealed that viewers were excited about the Missouri Belle (the newly acquired casino) plotline and commented most on posts involving Marty, Wendy and Ruth.
Working quickly, we devised a social mechanism that would allow fans to go all in to unlock plotlines involving the three fan-favorite characters, building intrigue ahead of the season’s release date.
We utilized Instagram Stories’ poll feature to let fans hit or stay on a virtual hand of Blackjack, unlocking a sneak peek scene involving Marty, Wendy, or Ruth if they could beat the dealer.
Fans went on a hot streak in the month preceding the show’s debut, viewing through Stories at an 83% completion rate and beating the dealer on every hand (except for Friday the 13th, when the house hit Blackjack) to unlock new clips.
Simultaneously, we posted “S2 Lessons Learned” clips on our grid, connecting the plotlines and fueling fan speculation ahead of the S3 premiere.
As much of the country shut down and fans went into quarantine, we leveraged the collective craving for something compelling to binge, maximizing excitement.
Moving into phase 3, close monitoring of conversation on “S2 Lessons Learned” posts, allowed for pinpointing plotlines and character moments in the early episodes of S3 that would continue to generate major discussion on both owned and earned channels.
Fueled by a captivated audience reacting in realtime to combustible new plot reveals, engagement exploded.
During launch week, Ozark S3 tallied millions of impressions in earned media via high profile celebrity engagement.
Growth and engagement numbers also illustrated deep resonance with fans, with the show’s Instagram following generating 110% growth between February and March, while maintaining an 8.9% Engagement Rate.
Social intrigue also translated to Netflix viewership, with Ozark securing Netlfix’s #2 most watched title during launch week.
Successfully heightening viewership and social engagement, Ozark’s Season 4 announcement post racked up 222k views on Instagram..
