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Alcaraz Signs

Netflix

Streaming platform partners with tennis ace to drop post-match clues, nets a big reveal for the sport star's upcoming series

23 Jul 2024

In tennis it is customary for players to sign memorabilia for fans in the stadium after a match. Given that a camera is never far away from a sports professional, it has also become a tradition for the winning player to sign the lens of one of the courtside cameras at the end of the game.

While players ordinarily just scribe their signature over the lens, on 10 March 2024, Carlos Alcaraz sparked a media frenzy when he signed off his first round win at the Indian Wells Open with the cryptic message ‘N. See You Soon’ in red ink. Fans, influencers and broadcasters instantly began to ponder what N represented, questioning whether it could be a link to Nike or fellow Spanish tennis great Rafa Nadal. Two days later, following a second round win, Alcaraz added further fuel to the fire by signing the message ‘Tudum’ across the camera.

On 14 March, after a victory versus Alexander Zverev in the third round, all was revealed. Alcaraz again teased fans by signing the camera to promise ‘No more secrets.’ That same day Netflix revealed itself as ‘N’ with a video on social media which filmed Alcaraz signing ‘Game, Set, Netflix’ to announce the upcoming release of his Netflix docuseries. The social posts were complemented by out of home executions across Spain and the US.

With the news fans and broadcasters had the answers they had been looking for all along. The big red ‘N’ from Alcaraz’s first message referred to Netflix’s logo, while ‘Tudum’ was a nod to the distinctive sound that plays upon launching the streaming service.

The campaign was created by David Madrid.

Contagious Insight

Making a racquet / Sports docuseries have exploded in popularity in recent years, but they’ve also exploded in volume, amplifying the noise that needs cutting through. By taking a guaranteed post game ritual and branding it, Netflix was able to hijack the media of its competitors in live TV broadcasting and reach exactly the group of fans it needed to reach. Using that moment to build mystery around one of tennis’ biggest stars guaranteed that broadcasters wouldn’t just show the stunt in real time, but use their platforms to build the conversation around it in the days that followed. It all meant that rather than having to use the announcement of the campaign to build anticipation for the series, Netflix had already built anticipation for the announcement itself.

Signature move / The slow tease and reveal behind the announcement was a great way for Netflix to consolidate its distinctive assets in the public eye. Among tennis fans, it reinforced the big red ‘N’ and ‘tudum’ sound as recognisable cues for the Netflix brand, largely because it nudged them to spend days working out what they could represent. In this way the approach tapped into the generation effect, the scientific phenomenon that people are likely to remember things better if they have had to invest effort to work something out or create it for themselves. By incorporating these assets into a stunt that created intrigue and got people guessing, it fast-tracked fans into making the association between the brand and its assets and in real time dismissed the other brands that consumers may associate the clues with instead.

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Alcaraz Signs

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Alcaraz Signs

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