Our brief was to launch Season Two of Netflix's Queer Eye in Australia with a local twist.
Netflix asked us for a social idea that both drew in a new audience and provided something for existing fans who were familiar with the show.
We needed to make an American show resonate with Australians, and create a campaign that promoted the show in a way that hadn't been done before.
Queer Eye Season One provided us with a heap of social conversation. And after a piece of social listening research, we found that the show had its own seriously quotable language - "Can you believe?", "Strugs to func", and "YAAASSSS, henny!" - that fans were incorporating into their conversations.
Interestingly, there's a small rural town in New South Wales, Australia, called Yass.
So we flew the entire cast of Queer Eye over for the most extra play on words ever. There, we made an Australian version of the unscripted show, just for social.
Once we had found the perfect Australian town, we needed a local to be our hero. We scoured the area, ran castings, and found farmer George, nominated by his son Levi.
We then worked closely with the Fab Five to produce a social episode that gave their individual expertise - grooming, fashion, culture, food and interiors - an Australian twist.
We built our timings around the insight that people binge watch a season within a week of it dropping on Netflix, and then head to social to talk about it. Therefore, we slated the YouTube release of our video for a week after the season launched, and worked back from there to create a three-week phase of sustained speculation.
We kicked off with a teaser video on Netflix Australia's Facebook and Twitter channels, starting social buzz immediately. In the video, the cast of Queer Eye - the Fab Five - announced that they would be coming to Australia to do a very special makeover, but didn't reveal any more details. We were then flooded by hundreds of post comments, speculating who the lucky hero would be - and where we would film.
After this, we added two huge Easter Egg billboards on each side of Yass - welcoming and waving goodbye to road-trippers from the Fab Five. As expected, a few people made the connection and posted their detective work to Twitter, but many didn't.
Finally, we flew the cast over to Canberra and filmed an entire spin-off social version of the show in just 10 hours in the close-by town of Yass.
After wrapping, the Fab Five continued to drive social reach from their own channels by sharing snippets of their visit on Instagram Stories without revealing their final destination.
During this spike of activity and attention, we released another teaser moment on Twitter to satisfy public and press speculation: the official crowning of the Fab Five as the Yass Queens with the Mayor of Yass herself.
Following this, the Fab Five helped us get the PR machine working by sharing hints of their secret project on national news TV and radio shows. The staggered release of these stories kept fans guessing.
One week later, we dropped "Yass, Australia!" on YouTube and Facebook.
The social video was so successful it was added permanently to Netflix and made available to 139 million Netflix subscribers globally.
Originally intended for Australian Facebook and YouTube audiences, the 20-minute video is now on Netflix as part of the permanently streaming Queer Eye collection of content.
Our idea turned a local campaign into a global conversation and blew up from the moment the Fab Five touched down in Canberra.
"Yass, Australia" was viewed over 22m times and drove 82.3m impressions and 550k engagements on social alone.
These numbers were reflected when 'Yass, Australia' became a trending moment on Google, YouTube and Twitter.
Once the hero video was released, it was featured in 55 different press outlets globally, including full-page spreads in the Guardian and GQ, alongside coverage on PedestrianTV, Studio Ten and Sunrise.
Post-launch, the 20-minute video got onto national prime time TV - it appeared on Gogglebox, and ABC News review show The Mix, where in-house critics reviewed it as part of a wider discussion about the new wave of quality queer TV.
Along with these numbers and big results, our idea had an impact that can't be quantified. It helped George change his life and his mindset for good. And, it ignited a conversation about toxic masculinity in Australia with many audience members commenting on how powerful it was to see a man be so open with his emotions.
