Netflix viewers contain multitudes in Juan Cabral’s wonderfully creepy ‘Who’s Watching?’ ad

It seems like an innocent question: Who’s watching? It’s the query that greets you when you launch Netflix and are asked to choose a user account. But in David Madrid’s new commercial for Netflix Spain, directed by Juan Cabral, it’s a portal to deeper existential explorations. Who are you, deep down? What combination of Netflix shows will satisfy the cravings and curiosities of your many hidden selves? These are weighty issues. In the spot, we see a woman named Norma struggling with them. From the first frame, she looks panic-stricken. The “Who’s watching?” prompt throws her into a tailspin, and almost immediately she’s tussling with herself for the remote. Things only get stranger from there. The spot has a great vibe—creepy yet comic. The bus scene, in particular, is excellent, with Norma getting viewing advice from versions of herself who seem to have emerged from the shows themselves—including, most hilariously, “Wednesday” and “Alpha Males.” There’s a “Black Mirror” thing going on, aptly enough. And it’s nice to see Netflix go a little darker like this—an approach that subtly acknowledges the addiction of television in the age of binge watching. It’s an approach that other streamers have used successfully in the past—notably, Droga5 London’s “Great Shows Stay With You” work for Amazon Prime. Pancho Cassis, global chief creative officer at David, told Ad Age that in such a competitive landscape, Netflix needed a brand campaign to promote its most considerable advantage—its wide range of genres and content. “But we didn’t want to fall into the trap of using footage from the shows and the movies,” he said. “That’s the easy solution: let the celebrities carry the weight of the proposal. Everyone else does that. And we knew it wouldn’t work with consumers. That’s why we went for the human truth, the product insight. And ended up finding Norma, a normal woman with inner struggles whenever she turns on Netflix and reads the famous question: ‘Who’s watching?’” David enlisted Juan Cabral—who helped create advertising classics such as Cadbury “Gorilla” and Sony “Balls”—to make the spot “feel like entertainment more than advertising,” Cassis added. “Just like with ‘Proudly Second Best’ from Ikea or ‘Confusing Times’ from Burger King, we saw the opportunity to put the product front and center by connecting it to a universal human truth,” Cassis said. “And that’s always an unbeatable combo.”

Netflix viewers contain multitudes in Juan Cabral’s wonderfully creepy ‘Who’s Watching?’ ad

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