PROJECT: The Tinder Swindler – #WildThingsForLove Social Campaign
CLIENT: Netflix
AGENCY: BBH + PXL
ROLE: Director + Creative Producer
DESCRIPTION: In partnership with global creative agency BBH New York and PXL, I served as Director and Creative Producer for Netflix on a social media campaign to promote the launch of the smash hit film, The Tinder Swindler. This campaign was focused primarily on TikTok, leveraging the Stitch feature. Our task was to strategically normalize the actions of the victims in the film by shifting the narrative away from victim shaming, focusing on the idea that many people go to extremes for love. The campaign featured a combination of Netflix’s unscripted talent and a slew of influencers, answering the fundamental question: “What is the wildest thing you've done for love?”
Amidst concerns surrounding COVID-19, our production was shot and directed 100% remotely. Using remote camera systems, I coordinated seven shoots across six cities and two continents over three days. All final videos were localized, captioned, and delivered with unique aspect ratios for four major social platforms: TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter.
DATA: . The campaign hero piece generated over15M aggregate views across all platforms. On TikTok, there were over five hundred users who responded by Stitching their own wild love stories using the hashtag, #wildthingsforlove, resulting in over 100M impressions. The Tinder Swindler was the first documentary to ever reach the coveted position of #1 film in the US on Netflix.
Hero Piece
Social Media Response
The campaign helped to catalyze a shift not only in discourse over social media, but also in the ways that journalists were speaking about the film and about victim shaming in general.
Press Response
The Tinder Swindler quickly rose to the #1 position in the US – the first documentary to achieve this coveted status. The film clocked in a record 45.8 million hours worldwide during its debut week, and has since accumulated 172M total viewing hours, placing it in the top 30 most-watched movies of all time on Netflix.
Results
With the narrative shifted away from victim shaming, people began calling for a GoFundMe to be set up for the victims. The three primary victims, Cecile, Pernilla and Ayleen, set up a GoFundMe that attracted over 9000 donations from around the world, totaling over $180,000 USD.
