Case study: how Netflix used Mumbai hoardings to launch Sacred Games

When Netflix launched Sacred Games in July 2018, it did not compete with the incumbents on television spend. It built its own release ritual using outdoor. The Ganesh Gaitonde look, staring down from unipoles and building wraps across Mumbai, became inseparable from the show and helped it break through in a country where Netflix was still a small player.

The goal

Announce Netflix as a serious commissioner of Indian originals. Drive trial subscriptions during the launch fortnight in metros. Signal to the industry and the audience that this was event television.

The approach on the road

Book a mix of unipoles, large hoardings and building wraps across South and Central Mumbai and along the Western and Eastern Express Highways. Use the character portraits at scale, with almost no copy, so the image did the entire job. Time the peak to the seven days before release.

Evidence boundary

Netflix does not publish an audited outdoor spend, site count or subscription outcome for this launch. The work is still useful to study because the visual was designed to read at scale and the release date gave the campaign a clear moment. Do not treat it as proof that a large portrait alone will create viewing or subscription growth.

What we can learn

Sometimes the hoarding is the show. If the visual is powerful and the audience already has some context, less copy works harder than more. Netflix trusted the face and the mood, and let the medium carry them.

Credits

Brand: Netflix India. Show: Sacred Games, produced by Phantom Films for Netflix. The show page is available from Netflix.