Netflix dominates social conversation over the holidays
If the words “Bird Box” and “Bandersnatch” don’t immediately light up images in an individual’s mind, that person likely had better things to do than fill up on the most popular movies on Netflix over the holidays.
Social media users and news outlets were buzzing after bingeing the Sandra Bullock sci-fi drama “Bird Box” and the newest “Black Mirror” movie, “Bandersnatch.” With these two hits coming relatively close to one another, Netflix made a rare move and released viewership numbers.
Netflix announced on its Twitter account that “Bird Box” had over 45 million viewers in its first seven days. This fairly unprecedented (and unverified) report from the Netflix team implies that a record number of viewers watched at least 75 percent of the film, an impressive release for a movie that is readily available in most households across the world.
These numbers are completely believable to those who were tuned into social media and saw their news feeds flooded with memes and updates about the film. The problem? These memes were mostly generated as part of Netflix’s marketing strategy for the movie (which they prefer because real advertising is much more expensive). This advertising might make the number of people who made the conscious choice to watch Bullock run blindfolded from an alien invasion a little uncertain, but the result for total number of viewers is the same: a lot.
Netflix continued their reign over the 2018 holiday season with the release of “Black Mirror: Bandersnatch” just three days after Christmas. Set in the 80s, “Bandersnatch” is an interactive movie in which a videogame creator goes off of his medication while creating a choose-your-own-adventure game. He begins to have hallucinations and trouble controlling himself, eventually realizing that someone else has been controlling him all along (which is extremely meta considering that the movie’s real audience is sitting at home making choices for him). The film has five different endings depending on what the viewer chooses as they watch the story unfold.
This is an experimental storytelling format and technology for Netflix. Once again, their marketing team remained non-existent until the day before the film’s release. Shortly after the premiere on Netflix, social media exploded with memes and content related to the film, assuring that many would actually watch the new movie just so that they could understand the memes.
With the apparent success of this new marketing strategy, the question remains whether the viewer is choosing their Netflix content of if Netflix is choosing it for them.
—erickwood97@gmail.com
@GrahamWoodMedia