The Wrap: Flix Effect

Netflix is waking up to the marketing powerhouse it can be, another go at a BTC ETF, and the most popular ETF manager on earth.

Flix Effect

Perhaps the greatest marketing engine of the last decade doesn’t run a single ad. Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit created an appetite for chess never seen before, which says a lot about a 1500 year old game.

Following the show’s premiere in late October, sales of wooden chess sets rose by 125%. Chess.com, the largest online chess site in the world, reported a 40% increase in daily games as 100,000 new members joined the site each day through mid November.

Market research agency NPD found that the time spent watching Barbie on Netflix correlated closely with Barbie sales. Barbie sales picked up as Netflix released two new shows in March and September.

Netflix’s marketing power is no first-time-phenomenon nor a secret to the company. If you’re good at something, charge for it, right? Netflix Original Stranger Things has been a money making powerhouse both inside and outside the four walls.

In 1985, Coca-Cola launched ‘New Coke’ in what was infamously one of their worst strategic decisions. The new recipe lasted on shelves for 79 days before being canned. Indeed, 1985 is also the year Stranger Things S3 is set and Coca-Cola revives ‘New Coke’ in placements throughout the show. The surely pricy exposure creatively assists in setting an authentic scene of mid 80s America.

Aside from that, Levis, H&M and Nike all released Stranger Things inspired collections appealing to the show’s 70m viewers.