Marian Lee Keynote: Online Marketing Rockstars Festival (OMR) 2025

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Marian Lee Keynote: Online Marketing Rockstars Festival (OMR) 2025

Entertainment

07 May 2025

GlobalGermany

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Hello, OMR! It is such a thrill to be here with you all today.

In my career, I've always been attracted to brands that create a deep connection with their fans - whether it's VOGUE or Spotify. But I've never felt the kind of love from people that I feel since I started working at Netflix.

When they find out, they want to talk about their favorite shows and movies. And I love doing it, too!

Of course everyone loves big, global sensations like Emily in Paris, Bridgerton, and The Night Agent. But we also have local series like The Leopard from Italy, Lupin from France, Helicopter Heist from Sweden and The Gentlemen from the UK that have attracted audiences all over the world.

This also includes some hugely popular German series. For example, I know you all grew up knowing about Sisi, but I wasn't familiar with her story until I watched The Empress. I absolutely loved the costumes and the chemistry.

And the Kaulitz and Kaulitz show is truly insane. Their banter and all the behind-the-scenes moments are so entertaining. And I had no idea that Tom is married to Heidi Klum.

That variety and quality is why Netflix has become the go-to option for more than 700 million people looking for their next obsession. Our trailers alone generate over 7 billion impressions every month on Netflix - more than 40x what they get on YouTube.

And a lot of the conversation around those titles happens on social media, where we have over 1 billion followers - one of the largest and most passionate fan bases of any brand in the world. Last year alone, our social channels generated almost 150 billion organic impressions.

It helps explain why our shows and movies influence everything from what people search for, to the music they listen to, to the books they read. And the great thing is, it drives more people back to Netflix. Creators love it too because it means bigger audiences for their stories.

That's why many people look at my job and think it must be easy. And in some ways it is. But, like all of your jobs, mine also has its challenges.

These days, entertainment is incredibly competitive.

In addition to television and films, there are all the other ways people can spend their time - listening to Spotify, gaming on Twitch, browsing TikTok, or scrolling through Instagram.

When you think about it, it's actually amazing that any of us can get people to do anything for more than a few seconds.

That's why it's such a challenge to get our members to come back - day after day, month after month. But the best way to do it is by connecting with and inspiring fans. Because, as we like to say at Netflix, fandom solves almost all known problems'.

So today, I want to share four lessons I've learned, about how to create and sustain that fandom. And because we're Netflix, I've got some familiar faces to help me do it.

Lesson one: Be a great dance partner

How many of you have seen the Wednesday dance that went viral a couple years ago?

And how many of you knew that Bloody Mary - the Lady Gaga song that played in the background - wasn't even in the show? It's true. A fan sped it up did the dance to it and posted it. Then our team got in touch with Lady Gaga, who filmed herself dancing to the track.

When it first came out in 2011, Bloody Mary didn't get a ton of traction. It wasn't a single, and it didn't have a music video. But after the Wednesday phenomenon 11 years later, it made the Top 100 charts in more than a dozen countries.

Season 2 of Wednesday is coming out this summer, and it's going to be even bigger and more twisted than Season 1. And rumor has it Lady Gaga may make a cameo but we'll all have to wait and see.

Traditionally, brand marketing has been about expressing a company's values to the world and trying to connect with people. But engaging consumers today - especially Gen Z - requires a different approach.

That's why we try to show up wherever people are talking - especially on social media. On TikTok, WhatsApp, and LinkedIn, we're the number one entertainment brand, by far.

It's all about helping our fans feel a tangible connection to our brand and our values so they'll keep coming back.

Lesson two: It's not always the usual suspects

In marketing, some hits are relatively easy to predict.

For example, one of our first big movies of the year was Back in Action starring Jamie Foxx and Cameron Diaz. You don't need to be an expert to know that a lot of people are going to press play on that - including in Germany, which is why we held the global premiere in Berlin.

But Back in Action is not our biggest title of 2025.

That distinction belongs to a small British drama series that is already our third most popular English language show of all time. Over the last couple of months, it's sparked a global conversation about children and social media - from dinner tables, to the halls of power.

For those of you who haven't seen it yet, Adolescence is not an easy watch - especially if you're a parent. But it's a powerful one - the story of how a family's world is turned upside down, when their 13 year old son is arrested and charged with the murder of a teenage girl.

A couple weeks after Adolescence came out, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he had watched it with his teenage kids. Today, it's available to all secondary schools across the UK through our partnership with Into Film - a leading UK charity for film in education.

You see, sometimes the most brand-defining hits are not the flashiest. They're the ones that hit on something real, something true, something that can b

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