How Netflix and alma Turned Narcos Into a Spanish Lesson
Netflix and Miami-based agency alma launched two interconnected digital campaigns for Narcos Season 2 in the United States in July 2016, using a staged episode leak and an irreverent Spanish language lesson drawn from the show's own dialogue to generate earned media and cultural conversation ahead of the season premiere.
The campaign comprised two distinct but related executions. The first, titled "Episode Leak," staged the appearance of a leaked Narcos Season 2 premiere online, creating what Ad Age described as a "social media furor" by convincing audiences the episode had genuinely escaped before its official release date. The second execution, "Spanish Lessons," repurposed dialogue and characters from the show as a deliberately absurd Colombian Spanish language course, turning the show's narco vernacular into an interactive entertainment moment. Together, the two executions operated as a unified narrative device — each amplifying the other's reach across the United States media landscape.
The campaign contained two media assets and was designed to function within the digital medium, harnessing social platforms and earned press coverage as the primary distribution channels rather than paid broadcast placements. The objective was to position Narcos Season 2 as a cultural event in its own right, sustaining interest from existing fans while reaching new audiences through the kind of organic sharing that no traditional television trailer could reliably produce. In the United States entertainment market of 2016, where streaming services were competing intensely for subscriber attention, the campaign represented a deliberately unconventional approach to episodic narrative marketing.
Alma identified a core consumer insight that shaped both executions. Narcos had already established a devoted English-speaking audience in the United States, yet the show's authentic Colombian Spanish dialogue was simultaneously one of its most distinctive creative assets and one of its most discussed friction points among viewers. Rather than softening that tension, alma chose to weaponise it — using the linguistic and cultural specificity of the series as the campaign's central creative mechanism.
The strategic rationale was grounded in the competitive dynamics of the United States streaming market in 2016. Netflix was expanding its subscriber base rapidly, with global SVOD revenue reaching approximately $14.6 billion that year, according to industry forecasts cited by sramanamitra.com. The global video streaming market was valued at approximately $30.29 billion in 2016 and was forecast to reach $70.05 billion by 2021, representing a compound annual growth rate of approximately 18.3 percent, according to einpresswire.com. In this environment, competitors including Amazon Prime Video and Hulu were each investing aggressively in original content marketing, making audience attention scarcer and more expensive to earn through conventional paid media. Alma's response was to treat the campaign itself as content — something audiences would choose to engage with and share, rather than skip or ignore.
The "Episode Leak" execution exploited the media industry's well-documented appetite for content leaks, a phenomenon that by 2016 had become a reliable driver of social media acceleration across the United States entertainment press. By staging rather than suffering a leak, Netflix and alma inverted the conventional risk calculus, turning a scenario that studios typically fear into a precision-engineered narrative asset. The "Spanish Lessons" execution extended the same logic, transforming the show's existing dialogue into a shareable educational format with an inherently comic dimension that rewarded viewers already familiar with the series.
Creative direction for the campaign sat with Iu Lalueta as Creative Director, working under Chief Creative Officer and Co-President Alvar Suñol and Creative Chairman and CEO Luis Miguel Messianu at alma's Miami headquarters. Associate Creative Directors Beatriz Torres Marin and Gabriel Ferrer led copywriting, while Luis Aguilera and Gabriel Reyes served as Associate Creative Directors responsible for art direction. Digital strategy was directed by Carly Sutherland, with VP of Digital Michael Sotelo overseeing the broader digital execution framework. Account supervision was handled by Cristina Lage.
The creative approach for "Episode Leak" depended entirely on the credibility of its central conceit. For the execution to generate a genuine social media furor, as Ad Age reported, the staged leak had to be convincing enough to circulate as authentic news within United States entertainment media before audiences and press recognised the artifice. This demanded precise control over the moment and manner of release — the execution had to feel discovered rather than distributed. The craft lay not in production spectacle but in the architecture of the deception itself, structured so that the reveal of the stunt amplified rather than undermined the campaign's impact.
"Spanish Lessons" operated through a different register of craft. The execution took Narcos characters and their Colombian Spanish dialogue — material native to the show's existing two media assets — and reframed it as language instruction. The tone was deliberately irreverent, leaning into the absurdity of learning conversational Spanish from cartel figures. This required careful editorial selection from the show's existing footage to construct a coherent narrative arc within the lesson format, balancing comedic effect with enough linguistic authenticity to function as a genuinely shareable piece of digital content. Production credits beyond the named alma team are not publicly documented for either execution.
The campaign earned significant recognition at the 2017 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, confirming its standing as one of the more decorated digital entertainment campaigns to emerge from the United States media industry that cycle.
"Episode Leak" won a Silver Lion in PR and Bronze Lions in both Cyber and Entertainment Lions at Cannes 2017, according to publicly available festival records. "Spanish Lessons" performed at an even higher level, winning Gold Lions in PR, Direct, and Creative Data — three of the most competitive categories at the festival — along with a Silver Lion in PR, according to Cannes Lions festival documentation. Across both executions, the campaign accumulated multiple Lions, with the Gold wins in Direct and Creative Data reflecting particular industry respect for the structural ingenuity of the "Spanish Lessons" concept as both a data-informed and behaviourally targeted piece of work.
No verified audience reach, click-through, or subscriber attribution data for the campaign is publicly available beyond the awards record. Structurally, however, the campaign's effectiveness is legible in the breadth of its Lions across categories — PR recognition signals earned media scale, while the Creative Data Gold indicates that alma's approach to repurposing show assets was judged to demonstrate sophisticated use of content signals and audience behaviour. The Clapboard Score for this campaign is 63 out of 100, reflecting strong creative and strategic ambition balanced against the absence of publicly documented performance metrics. For a two-asset digital campaign operating without paid broadcast support, the volume of Cannes recognition across five categories represents an unusually strong return on creative investment.
Netflix and alma launched two connected digital campaigns for Narcos Season 2 in the United States in July 2016. "Episode Leak" staged a fake premiere leak to generate social media attention, while "Spanish Lessons" used the show's cartel dialogue as an irreverent Colombian Spanish language course. Both facts appear in festival-documented awards records.
The campaign won multiple Cannes Lions in 2017. "Episode Leak" received Silver in PR and Bronze in Cyber and Entertainment Lions. "Spanish Lessons" won Gold in PR, Direct, and Creative Data, plus a Silver in PR, according to Cannes Lions festival records. This made it one of the most decorated entertainment campaigns of that year.
Miami-based agency alma created both executions for Netflix. Creative leadership included Chief Creative Officer Alvar Suñol, Creative Director Iu Lalueta, and Associate Creative Directors Beatriz Torres Marin, Gabriel Ferrer, Luis Aguilera, and Gabriel Reyes, with digital strategy led by Carly Sutherland and overall direction from Creative Chairman Luis Miguel Messianu.
"Spanish Lessons" reframed existing Narcos dialogue and characters as a Colombian Spanish language tutorial. The execution repurposed the show's two media assets into shareable digital content, using the cartel vernacular's inherent absurdity as a comedic hook. This approach earned Gold Lions in Direct and Creative Data at Cannes 2017, recognising its data-informed creative strategy.
In the United States in 2016, Netflix competed with Amazon Prime Video and Hulu for subscriber attention in a streaming market where global SVOD revenue reached approximately $14.6 billion, according to sramanamitra.com. Alma's strategy treated the campaign itself as organic content rather than paid media, reducing reliance on conventional advertising in an increasingly crowded market.
The Clapboard Score for the Netflix and alma Narcos campaign is 63 out of 100. The score reflects the campaign's strong creative ambition and multiple Cannes Lions wins across PR, Direct, Creative Data, Cyber, and Entertainment categories, balanced against the absence of publicly verified audience performance metrics for the two-asset digital campaign.
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