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What You Learn About Marketing From Netflix Series Money Heist?

Money Heist, or La Casa de Papel, is not just a popular TV series but a marketing phenomenon with valuable lessons for marketers. Its unique marketing mix, targeted promotions, cultural connections, and effective branding have contributed to its global success. The show's emphasis on research and planning highlights the importance of market research. Overall, Money Heist offers valuable insights for marketers seeking to engage their audience and make an impact.

Introduction

The ongoing flu pandemic has differentiated between the essential and the not-so-essential. Your TV nerd friends, for instance, are an indispensable source of quick cures for lockdown boredom. If the TV nerd in your life has not yet recommended a Money Heist binge-watch, then you need to widen your circle of friends.
La Casa de Papel, aka Money Heist, is a good heist…the kind of heist that everyone and their dog loves. The Spanish series has a robbery plan so meticulous that it can cause Danny Ocean’s death from envy. The award-winning Netflix series also pays homage to art, philosophy, and history, first by raising Salvador Dali’s incredibly famous exaggerated mustache from the dead.
Dali’s art philosophy rejected the capitalist modern society of the early 20th century. The artist and the thieves’ genius both align in this series. The Professor and his modern-day Robin Hood styled gang named after famous world cities cleverly rob the Bank of Spain.
What’s more, the show is littered with Manu Pilas’s “Bella Ciao”, an Italian anti-fascist resistance folk song. If you’ve watched it, it’s probably already playing in your head as you read this. If you’ve not watched it, stop living in limbo and get started!

Money Heist Lessons For The Marketer (Yes, Expert Marketers Love It, Too)

The show’s revolutionary appeal becomes a major selling point. The tagline “Join the resistance” is fast becoming a real-life element of the show.
Money Heist is not just a good heist but also a resistance story. The Netflix show has displayed its resistance ethos so well, that protestors around the world now channel the show into their real-world protests.
The Money Heist red jumpsuit and Dali masks have featured in protests in Iran, Puerto Rico, and France. Despite its critical acclaim, La Casa de Papel’s first season premiered in Spain with a show of promise but flopped later on. It is its acquisition by Netflix that saved it from cancellation.
The media services provider re-titled it to Money Heist for its US library and made a minimal fuss for its advertising. Over time, subscribers found it, loved it, and turned the show to one of Netflix’s most shrewd gambles. Marketers can glean many valuable lessons from the phenomenon that is Money Heist, the professor, his gang, and Netflix.

Have a Unique Marketing Mix

It is not a secret that Netflix is a marketing genius. It has its price, product, place, and promotion marketing strategies just right. The content provider, however, excels at its distribution or place feature. The media services and product company has a rather unique understanding of this marketing proposition.
The utmost desire of the business is to ensure that anyone anywhere can watch its content. Consequently, perfecting its user experience has been core to the success of its strategy. You can access Netflix from a laptop, smartphone, TV, or tab from one remarkably simple but striking user interface.
The poster thumbnails of the content act as navigation through series and movies that reflect your viewing habits. Are you into crime with a dash of your favorite telenovela, action-comedy, and anti-capitalistic sentiment? You will find Money Heist prominently featured on your timeline.
Hulu, for instance, blends viewership with distracting ads. Amazon Prime Video constantly steers viewers towards downloads — Blu-ray purchases or its Prime subscription service. Netflix, however, is all about distraction-free viewership.
With tech at its heart, Netflix has prominently presented La Casa de Papel to its audience’s dashboard. The company then gently nudges viewers towards the show by constantly reminding them of their viewership progress.
Netflix ensures that you will not forget the series and are eventually hooked to it. The company has mastered the place factor by influencing viewer behavior through knowledge.

Fortune Favors The Brave

In the last few weeks, Money Heist’s demand has risen 31 times more than the perennially popular The Walking DeadGame of Thrones, or Westworld. The show is a wild ride that starts as a hostage situation at Spain’s Royal Mint and later abounds into a complexity that upends all expectations and conventions associated with the crime genre.
La Casa de Papel is so different in function and form that it has subverted viewer expectations worldwide. As an illustration, its host of versatile and morally ambiguous characters pivots between anti-hero, antagonist, and protagonist, then back at the drop of a hat.
You do not know what to expect with them. For instance, viewers do not know whether Tokyo is a brat or an emotionally disturbed person in need of compassion.
Nevertheless, love her or hate her, Tokyo is the character that keeps the story fresh, and you just cannot get enough of her.
Like its characters, Netflix has also adopted out-of-the-box thinking and advertising campaigns for the show.
In its Frankfurt airport promotional campaign, Netflix had red suitcases filled with money on the airport’s luggage belts. The suitcases had the names of the show’s main characters as well as Netflix branding on the sides.
In France, the content streaming company went big and created fake front pages for the region’s media, implying a ‘hacking’ of newspaper’s headlines by a gang of thieves. What a genius way to mobilize viewers into joining the Resistencia?

Targeting Works

La Casa de Papel dropped its fourth season in April 2020 and has since then dominated viewership around the world. While demand for content has soared amid social distancing and self-isolation measures, the originally non-English series popularity has been a great milestone for Spanish productions.
The show has garnered a forceful global footprint despite its prioritization of Spanish cultural identity. The show’s creator Alex Pina has connected with diverse audiences from different languages and cultures. The thriller is the most sought after Netflix show in Argentina, France, Italy, and Brazil.
Political protestors around the world have worn its costume, while babies in Brazil are named after the show’s protagonists. Money Heist’s cultural specificity is a great attraction for non-Spanish viewers. The Spanish heist drama is neither downbeat like British shows nor laid back like Scandi crime TV shows.
All it’s character’s feelings and relationships are a significant part of the plot. The exchange of feelings between characters is so raw, refreshing, and Spanish that the culture’s way of self-expression becomes a selling point for the show.
The audience’s expectations of a cool, rational, and perfect heist are disrupted by hefty Latin emotions. This differentiates Money Heist from other popular restrained, scientific, and cooler perfect English heists.
Additionally, the show has its roots firmed up by the Spanish literature philosophy of an idealistic yet reckless rebellion against the established order. The show’s political edge and anti-system philosophy communicated by Bella ciao, the Italian protest song, strikes a strong chord with viewers in certain countries.
The show is more popular in regions that have skepticism towards the governments and their central banks. The entertaining narrative speaks to a disenfranchised multitude in parts of Europe and South America, resonating widely with their frustration. Netflix’s fantastic analytics has picked up the show’s primary audience and splashed a wall-to-wall promotion of the show in both Italy and France.

Brand Your Way to Your Customer’s Hearts

Every once in a while, a TV show sprouts a cult following that propels it into its next level of success. Money Heist is one of those lucky shows that not only enjoys unique popularity but a worldwide recognition of its branding elements. The show’s director Alex Pina has received superfan’s tattoo photos of the Professor and Tokyo.
Additionally, the show’s red overalls, gang masks, and TV costume recognizability are only rivaled by The Handmaid’s Tale bonnet. The criminals in the story also ooze charisma and look good in their overalls. As an addition to the perfect branding elements, these character’s names are a shout-out to some popular cities around the world.
There is the brazen and hot-blooded Tokyo, who many viewers hate to love. And the self-absorbed Berlin, a heist mastermind with an ego the size of a small planet. Then there is the amiable Nairobi, the organizational genius of the lot. Denver is not the brightest bulb, but he is charming and big-hearted while Rio is a bumbling youth, brimming with tons of never-say-never attitude.
The show uses its characters and their costumes as memorable branding elements that keep it fresh in the memory of its audience.
Its successful branding elements have additionally become a form of free advertising for the show around the world. For example, discussions about its city-themed characters are exploding on social media and forums.

Research Wins Battles

Despite him being the awkward academic and nerd who at first looks very ill-suited to crime, the professor is the leader. His master planning and research make the unbelievable heist story believable. He is a chess player that plans the smallest of moves and details that relate to the heist.
Consequently, the gang and the show’s viewers have the confidence knowing that nothing will take the heist by surprise. The professor warns against overconfidence. He pushes the gang to visit places of interest before the heist to familiarize themselves with the conditions of the plant.
Market research will improve communication, identify opportunities, and lower your risks.

Conclusion

Heists make the perfect stories, but Money Heist is more than a story. It is a movement, a phenomenon that is crossing over from story to reality.
Isn’t that the marketing nirvana that all markets dream about? A marketing strategy so phenomenal that it brings your products or services to life? The secrets ingredients to this success are yours for the taking in La Casa de Papel.
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Gaurav Roy

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