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Netflix Built a House on Top of a Billboard on Sunset Blvd., and It’s Kinda Genius
The campaign worked so well because the idea came directly from the story
Netflix just created one of the best OOH activations of the year so far.
They built an actual house on top of a billboard on Sunset and Selma in Los Angeles and put a man inside it. For several days, he lived there and interacted with people walking and driving past.
It’s kind of crazy. And it’s genius.
The campaign worked so well because the idea came directly from the story. It promoted The Last House, Netflix’s new sci-fi thriller about a family trapped inside their home; they can’t leave, and their resources start to run out. Netflix took that premise and made it physical. Suddenly, there was a house where a house shouldn’t be, with someone actually living inside it.
It’s stunts like this that demonstrate the bigger opportunity for entertainment brands with OOH, which traditionally start with the same question: How do we take the key art, trailer or campaign creative and make them work on a billboard?
This can be effective, but the medium is still functioning as the canvas for the content. Here, the medium becomes part of the message.
For brands, the more interesting question is: What could happen because a billboard or physical canvas exists? What could we do to make people stop, look up, take a photo, share our content across social or come back the next day?
Netflix gave people a reason to do all of those things. The performer was there for three days, waving at commuters and communicating on a whiteboard with people below. Netflix then posted a simple “There’s a guy in there 👀” on social, and the thing took on a life of its own.
As with all OOH, the location was important. Sunset Blvd. is already part of the cultural landscape of L.A. OOH is everywhere. A traditional movie billboard has to compete with everything around it. But when you put something into the real world that people aren’t expecting to see, you change the dynamic completely.
It also got the attention of the press. CBS Los Angeles sent up aerial footage and put reporters on the sidewalk underneath it. NBC4 ran it on the evening news, KTLA went out to get reactions, and City News Service distributed the story to outlets including Deadline, Patch and MyNewsLA.
The billboard existed physically in Los Angeles. But the idea was big enough to become a story all over the world.
According to FlixPatrol, The Last House went to No. 1 on Netflix in 84 countries on its first day and reached 89 territories by Aug. 9, including the U.S. The billboard may not be entirely responsible for moving the needle. There are obviously plenty of factors that determine what people watch. But it’s hard to ignore the amount of attention this activation generated.
That’s the kind of value OOH can bring. It can give a film or show a presence in the real world that a standard piece of key art or a digital-only campaign simply can’t.
This approach isn’t about making every OOH activation bigger, stranger or more elaborate—gimmicks are easy to sniff out. The physical idea has to connect to the property or the brand in a way that feels authentic. Maybe it’s a house. Maybe it’s a giant ball of hair rolling down the street.
Maybe it’s influencers piecing a billboard together with puzzle pieces. Maybe it’s something much simpler. OOH gives us what other channels don’t have: physical space, scale and a real-world audience. The brands creating the most memorable OOH aren’t just buying space but creating real-world experiences. The future of the medium will belong to brands that stop thinking in two dimensions and start thinking in experiences.
I thought I’d seen everything after the Percy Jackson waterfall billboard, but Netflix has managed to one-up it. I’m incredibly jealous that I had nothing to do with this one.
Related: Why Paramount’s ‘Scary Movie’ Is the New ‘Barbie’
