Make It Social London was hired by Netflix as the creative content agency for Sex Education, Season 4 Launch.
The challenge was to come up with a range of content to raise awareness for the new season launch, publicise the release date, re-engage and excite existing audiences with a re-cap from the previous series, reassure the fans their favourite characters were returning, and tease audiences with the new characters and storylines in season 4.
We also wanted to reach out to the uninitiated and grow new audiences with a range of compelling content to entice a new generation of fans.
Key to the global success of the series is its ability to take the stigma out of sexual self-discovery in a light-hearted and relatable manner. Our content had to lean into and celebrate this element of the show's success.
The main objective of the campaign was to deploy a cross-platform social media content strategy to reach key target demographics with a curated suite of AV, adapted and optimized for each platform such as Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.
In total, we created 137 individual video edits, with enough high-quality unique content to sustain a posting cadence of 3-4 posts per day in the 3 weeks pre & post-launch.
TikTok & Instagram would prove the key channel with the core 18-24-year-old audience skewing slightly more female than male. As this was a global roll-out, all our AV deliverables were supplied to easily be localised for foreign language territories.
We kicked off the campaign with Therapy Recap. A film conceived, written, creatively directed, and produced by the in-house team. The asset launched on September 5th and has had over 2.2 Million views on Instagram with over 225K engagements, on Twitter 710K views, YouTube 459K views & 236K on Facebook.
In response to the favorable audience reaction, in which we revealed the Jean Milburn character has had a baby and is unsure who the father is, we created a follow-up “Who’s your Daddy” a post which secured 1.2 million engagements on Instagram.
Next up we celebrated the OOH advertising takeover on the BFI IMAX.
Climax 21 brought fans behind the scenes on the cast photo shoot intercut with the footage of the poster campaign reveal. This tongue-in-cheek video short received over 1.9M views on Instagram with a staggering 257K organic likes.
Lets Get Physical was a retro-style workout video with our cast in character wearing lycra, leg-warmers paired with an iconic 80s soundtrack. On Instagram, it received 1.3M Views and 123K likes.
Launch Trailer was the series trailer created in-house. This asset was the centerpiece of the campaign and was chosen by Netflix to announce that Season 4 is “now streaming”. It premiered on TikTok and has been viewed over 26 million times on TikTok.
Trim Your Bush was our next originally scripted, produced, and filmed piece of content. Across all platforms, the asset was viewed 2.4M times with incredibly strong sentiment. On Instagram alone over 10% of viewers liked the content.
DIY Diary was another in-character piece we scripted in-house for Aimee Lou Woods & Gillian Anderson. Presented to the camera in an influencer/vlogger style: “Welcome to Aimee’s DIY Diaries” launched on Facebook and achieved over 6M Views.
What’s In The Box leaned heavily into the will they / won’t they on-screen sexual tension between the actors’ respective characters. 10% of viewers liked the content and across all platforms, the asset had 5.5M views.
With any entertainment release campaign, we would normally rely heavily on star talent engaging with the campaign. However, in July 2023 the American actors’ union SAG-AFTRA went on strike and we had to plan for a release campaign without the support of our star power. To minimize the impact, we pivoted to creating innovative content from existing material.
Marketing BTS was an idea we had when reviewing all the outtakes from the marketing shoots we filmed. There were too many hilarious moments not to share. 744K Views across all platforms
Series 4 Bloopers was created having trawled through several hundred hours of outtakes from the entire season 4 filming. 2.2M Views across all platforms.
Queer Joy is an uplifting and inspirational video short that celebrates the diversity of sexual preferences among the key characters. 7M views to date across all platforms.
Symphony was a hilarious compilation of non-dialogue moments set to music with accompanying animation overlays. 510K Views
Sex Education: A Lasting Legacy Reminded fans why they had fallen in love with the show.900K Views
The campaign captivated audiences across multiple platforms, delivering exceptional results and reaching a total viewing figure of 75,689,200. The campaign showcased the unique chemistry of the cast while celebrating their evolution alongside dedicated fans.
TikTok, Twitter, and Instagram were our key channels. On TikTok, we had over 31 Million views with exceptionally high engagement. On Instagram, we enjoyed 3,361,000 likes with a total engagement of 33.4 Million. On Twitter, we had over 11 Million total views with engagement of over 1.4 million.
