Netflix’s Tall Girl makes an epic comeback in 2022
Three years and a pandemic after Ava Michelle’s infamous “Size 13 Nikes” line from the original Tall Girl film, we were tasked with re-engaging fans and building hype with new audiences on TikTok and Instagram for Tall Girl 2.
Contracted through HSTL Productions to come up with some creative content for the campaign, I immersed myself in online fan communities and talent socials. We needed to speak directly to existing fans while simultaneously creating accessible, bite-size content that might intrigue new viewers.
We had only two short content capture days with talent to work with, so we prioritized scripting out ideas that captured their natural charisma and chemistry together for new fans, while editorializing & expanding on fan-favorite moments from the first film to draw out die-hard fans.
Some Specifics:
Finding trends that align with the film’s themes — even if they feel out of left field
This concept hit me as soon as I started concepting for this project, even though I knew it might be a tough sell. What if we used the iconic “My Name is Kendall, I’m a model, my favorite part of my body is my height” sound with 6’1” star Ava Michelle to post on her own channel?
At 5.5 million views and counting, the video is now the second highest performing TikTok on Ava’s channel, ever. Sometimes it pays off to create content that seamlessly ties into the campaign, even if the content doesn’t directly promote or hashtag.
Capitalizing on popular talent
Sabrina Carpenter wasn’t able to film any social content with the rest of the cast, but we knew her legion of fans would be eager for something dedicated to her character Harper on social. Sabrina’s engagement alone on this reel sparked conversation and a load of new fans.
Finding young fans on YouTube
We created this lighthearted “What’s in the Crate” custom video for Netflix Futures, Netflix’s dedicated kids & family page. We knew we could lean on this tried-and-true YouTube Kids format to give plenty of room for talent’s style and chemistry to shine.
I loved pulling from my pocket.watch experience and expertise on YouTube’s active young audience to put this one together!
Adding an editorial twist to fan favorite moments from the first film
TikTok is a platform where memorable lines and monologues get repeated to death. We wanted to do a slightly more polished twist on the popular “laptop monologue” style videos that users love.
We landed on a climactic scene from the first film, where Griffin Gluck’s Dunkleman defends Ava Michelle’s character from the high school bullies. We knew it would be a lot to memorize, but we thought Ava would be able to pull off the recreation beautifully — and she did!
The video — along with a clip of the original Dunkleman speech that was posted as a lead-in to this video — both drew over 2.4 million views, huge outliers to Netflix’s typical 50k-500k views per video at that time.
In fact, all of the custom Tall Girl 2 videos on TikTok outperformed the surrounding Netflix content on average, even pit against higher budget titles with bigger social conversation like Inventing Anna, Bridgerton, and Love is Blind.
