How Netflix Turned Suspense into Nationwide Participation for Squid Game
Client Profile & Objectives
Netflix is one of the world’s leading entertainment platforms, constantly launching global titles that depend heavily on cultural conversation and audience anticipation.
With the release of Squid Game Season 2, the challenge was generating viewership in a way that matched the scale, suspense, and cultural impact of Season 1.
The goal was not just reach, but reigniting excitement, expanding the conversation beyond core fans in Saudi Arabia, and meeting the heightened expectations of an audience amidst growing entertainment choices and cultural experiences.
Standard influencer promotion would have reduced the launch to simple awareness posts, weakening the suspense, curiosity, and public anticipation that are central to the Squid Game experience.
The primary KPI was awareness at a scale that drives organic conversation, earned reach, and cultural participation, making the launch feel like a real-world event rather than a short passing moment.
Netflix partnered with Sociata to transform the launch from creator promotion into a live social experience. Rather than relying on standard awareness posts, the goal was to create an experience audiences would naturally discover, decode, and share across platforms.
The Creator Selection
We first identified the cultural communities most likely to turn Squid Game Season 2 into a cultural conversation across Saudi Arabia.
The focus extended beyond existing Squid Game viewers to audiences that naturally thrive on curiosity, real-time conversation, and shared public moments. This included:
- Entertainment and pop-culture audiences who actively follow major releases, fan theories, and trending conversations
- Lifestyle and city creators who localize cultural moments within everyday social life
- Youth and Gen Z trend-driven communities who rapidly amplify discovery-led content
- Gaming audiences who naturally connect with challenge-driven and suspense-based narratives
- Comedy and reaction creators who turn public moments into highly shareable conversations
- Event-driven, FOMO-led communities that respond strongly to exclusivity and socially unmissable experiences
However, because success depended on conversation, not just visibility, creator selection could not rely on follower count alone.
Through our first-party data integrations with social platforms and creator performance tracking systems, we evaluated creators based on audience composition, engagement behavior, and viewership quality, allowing us to understand how creators perform natively on each platform, not just through surface-level reach.
To standardize creator comparison, we applied our proprietary scoring system, iScore, an AI-powered metric that evaluates creators based on their viewership and engagement rates, benchmarked against others in their category.
We then activated a strategic mix of mega, macro, mid, and micro creators, with each tier serving a distinct role in the campaign. Mega and macro creators drove immediate national visibility and helped push the campaign into mainstream conversation, while mid and micro creators strengthened local relevance and peer-to-peer trust, making the experience feel more believable and socially native within their communities.
Content Execution & Optimization
The main objective was viewrship, but the campaign needed to generate it through curiosity, conversation, and participation, not standard promotional posts.
The campaign began with a closed, invite-only Squid Game-themed event in Riyadh, featuring games inspired by the show and an exclusive screening of the first episode. Creators were given early access days before the public opening, along with the opportunity to invite a limited number of followers to attend with them.
Audiences were encouraged to engage by tagging friends and commenting with their favorite emojis for a chance to secure a spot, creating immediate interaction and competition. This mechanic drove strong early engagement while reinforcing exclusivity and FOMO.
The campaign then moved to Jeddah Airport, where pink guards appeared transporting oversized crates labeled as parts of the Young-hee doll, one of the most recognizable and unsettling symbols from the show.
The guards moved through baggage claim, taxi areas, and the main hall, loading the crates into grey vans while remaining completely silent and stiff, disrupting the normal flow of the airport and drawing attention from everyone around. For audiences familiar with the series, the crates immediately signaled what was happening. For everyone else, it created confusion and curiosity.
Creators documented their shock and confusion as they came across the activation, sharing their reactions in real time and fueling speculation around what was happening. As the guards began leaving in vans, they “accidentally” dropped coordinate cards that creators decoded to reveal a new location within Saudi Arabia, introducing the next step in the unfolding story.
Distribution relied heavily on organic discovery. Creators documented these moments as real-time experiences, while audiences amplified the campaign through tagging, speculation, and reactions across social media. The campaign spread like a social event, not a scheduled ad rollout.
What began at the airport quickly expanded across the country. Throughout December, 20 pink guards appeared across six major locations in KSA, extending the activation from Jeddah and Riyadh to AlUla, Abha, and the Eastern Province.
At each location, the same pattern repeated. The guards appeared in public spaces, carried out their movements, then left behind cards with coordinates pointing to the next destination. Creators documented each sighting, decoded the clues, and reacted to each new appearance, helping connect the story across locations without breaking the mystery.
This created a clear chain of events where each location led to another. Audiences began anticipating where the guards would appear next, watching closely for clues, sharing sightings, and trying to stay one step ahead. The lack of explanation became the trigger, people were no longer just reacting to the campaign, they were actively following it.
The strongest green flag was how quickly audiences shifted from passive viewers to active participants. Comment sections turned into theory boards, users tagged friends to decode sightings, and audiences actively searched for the next appearance.
Instead of pushing heavier branded messaging, the optimization focused on letting creators amplify each other’s content and extend the mystery. Creators reacted to sightings across different locations, connected clues between posts, and encouraged their audiences to follow the next coordinates rather than revealing the full story at once.
The more the audience participated, the less the campaign needed direct promotion, allowing earned reach to become the strongest performance driver.
Results & Impact
The campaign generated more than 19 million organic video views and over 524,556 engagements, proving that awareness at scale did not require heavy paid media when the idea itself was socially contagious.
With a CPV of just $0.007, the campaign delivered exceptional efficiency while maintaining strong cultural relevance and sustained public conversation across Saudi Arabia.
By turning the launch into an unfolding real-world experience rather than a traditional entertainment campaign, Netflix successfully transformed Squid Game Season 2 from a content release into a national social moment, one audiences did not just watch, but actively followed, discussed, and shared.
