Netflix Put a Man in a Billboard, and a 27%-Rated Movie Hit No. 1

Netflix spent three days last week with a man living inside a billboard over Sunset Boulevard, and the coverage went straight to the guy in the bathrobe.

The company crafted a furnished living room about 30 feet above the corner of Sunset and Selma, with "How long can you survive?" printed under the window.

A performer moved in on Thursday, August 6, and stayed through Saturday, waving at commuters and answering them on a whiteboard.

Netflix called it a nod to the isolation of the family in "The Last House," its newest sci-fi thriller about four people sealed inside their home.

Louis Leterrier directed the film, which stars Greta Lee and Wagner Moura as the parents.

The movie arrived on August 7, and critics took it apart.

Its Tomatometer opened at 43% and has fallen to 29% across 42 reviews as of August 10, with a 28% audience score.

Netflix subscribers pressed play anyway.

FlixPatrol logged "The Last House" at No. 1 on Netflix in 84 countries on its first day, reaching 89 territories, including the U.S., by August 9.

Netflix publishes its own weekly Top 10 on Tuesdays, so the official view count for release week is still a day out.

A three-day stunt on a Hollywood street corner earned Netflix days of free local news coverage, even going viral on social media.

A badly reviewed movie went to No. 1 in 89 countries, and the 27% score rarely entered the conversation.

This fact says plenty about what streaming actually pays its creative marketing teams to do.

An Attraction for News Cameras

The stunt itself received a lot of aid from news outlets looking for the next big thing to cover.

CBS Los Angeles sent up aerial footage of the performer in his living room and put reporters on the sidewalk underneath him.

NBC4 ran it on the 11:00 p.m. news the night it went up, and KTLA worked the street for reactions.

Meanwhile, City News Service pushed the story to Deadline, Patch and MyNewsLA.

Citizen, the crime and emergency alert app, sent a notification about a man stuck inside a billboard, which is how at least one person found out about it.

"I was just around the corner, and I got a notification on the Citizen App," Miro Markarian told CBS Los Angeles, calling it a creative stunt.

Most brands chasing reach make something that plays well on a phone held three feet from a face.

But for a media giant like Netflix, the stakes are much higher.

This is why it made something a camera crew could shoot from 300 feet and stand in front of for a two-minute segment.

Local broadcast still hands out free airtime to anyone who gives it a good enough picture, and out-of-home advertising can often be the cheapest way to make one.

A Bad Movie Costs Netflix Nothing

In a theater, a bad movie costs the studio real money.

Ticket buyers show up opening weekend, tell their friends to skip it, and sales fall off a cliff by the second Friday.

The trades print that collapse every Monday, and the studio watches the marketing budget it already spent stop working.

Netflix subscribers pay the same monthly fee no matter what they watch.

Someone can start "The Last House," hate it, and quit 20 minutes in, and Netflix ends the month with the same money either way.

So the campaign had one job, and it was to get people to press play once.

Three takeaways stand out for marketers:

• Design for the channel that still sends a crew: Local news gives free airtime to anything that photographs well from a helicopter, and a physical installation is the cheapest way to earn it.
• Know what a click is worth in your category: Streaming pays for the first play, retail pays for the first basket. Aim the creative at whichever one your business actually bills for.
• Treat product quality and campaign performance as separate scoreboards: A weak product can still win its launch week, though the bill for that gap arrives later in retention and trust.

Most marketing teams get graded on launch week and never see the invoice.

Our Take: Did Netflix Lose Control of Its Own Stunt?

Time Out crowned the performer "Hollywood's highest tenant," and people read a horror premise as a housing joke.

He sat in an air-conditioned box while the rest of Los Angeles worked through an August heat wave.

Most brand teams would treat this drift as a failure, because the same slip can make a campaign a punchline about the product.

But Netflix has no such exposure, since subscribers don't need to believe the premise to press play.

Experiential work is only this cheap to lose when the product gets paid before the verdict arrives.

Regardless if viewers liked the movie or not, all the streaming service had to do was create a viral stunt to get people talking and have more eyes on the product.

And get people talking, it did. 

The strongest campaigns give audiences something worth experiencing firsthand.

Explore these top experiential marketing agencies helping brands create real-world connections.