HBO
RECOMMENDED BY HUMANS
Engineering word-of-mouth
challenge
CHANGE THE STANDARD OF STREAMING RECOMMENDATIONS FROM EMPTY ALGORITHMS TO SOMETHING WITH MORE MEANING.
SOLUTION
Our insights team ran a series of qualitative and quantitative research studies. The studies revealed two basic truths:
Television streamers are tired big data and bad algorithmic recommendations, and;
Television streamers’ favorite shows are generally those recommended by their peers
With these insights in mind, our agency team created the Recommended by Humans campaign. Collaborating with HBO and award-winning documentarian Alison Klayman, we developed 36 long-form video recommendations, as well as a human-powered recommendation engine. Streamers immediately gained access to hundreds of recommendations from real fans, with the opportunity to watch the first episode of every human-recommended show for free. We promoted these assets with paid and organic content, spurring fan participation across the globe.
impact
Our word-of-mouth campaign garnered:
EXTENSIVE
MEDIA
coverage from Variety, Wired, and The Verge.
and:
netflix’s attention
Netflix announced that, moving forward, they would use real humans to curate their recommendations
It’s a smart ploy, positioning one of Netflix’s biggest (albeit flawed) strengths as a weakness, as a means to differentiate HBO.”
—Fast Company