2022 Winners & Shortlists

Background

‘Takki’ is one of Saudi Arabia’s most popular YouTube series ever. As part of their hyper-local content strategy, Netflix decided to pick up the rights to produce the show’s third season. The problem? Takki’s final episode ended almost a decade ago. We had to find a way to reach old-school Takki fans online and build hype about the new season—after a long, seven-year hiatus. Social media conversation has become the main trigger driving show adoption and viewership. So we had to harness the power of social media to get people talking about the show.

Describe the strategy

We found out that the old YouTube episodes were filled with comments from the fans, demanding another season, through the hashtag #MataTakki (#WhenIsTakki). But after seven years waiting for answers, the hashtag trend slowly faded away. To reignite the online conversation, we hijacked the most relevant digital media for hardcore Takki fans—the main actors’ social media profiles.

Describe the execution

We know fans like to decode every single detail about their favourite shows. To get them involved —and make sure they were the first to find out about the new season— we turned the actors’ social media accounts into a digital Takki easter-egg hunt. Blurring the lines between fiction and reality, Takki's actors quietly changed their social media profiles to embody their fictional counterparts, one day before the big trailer reveal. Not only did they suddenly change their names, looks and bios to bring their characters back to the online world, they also started interacting with each other and dropping clues that brought back some of the memories and conversation they had left behind, seven years ago.

List the results

Fans didn’t take long to piece the puzzle together and take social media by storm, buzzing about a possible new season. And just when everyone was talking about Takki, Netflix jumped into the conversation to reveal the answer—Takki's third season was coming back. Only on Netflix. Reach: 8M people reached organically Engagement: +23k social media interactions in less than two days Takki became Netflix’s top trending show in Saudi Arabia during launch week.