On Tuesday, Netflix launched its promotional website Streamberry, the name of a fictional streaming site featured in an episode of the final season of Black Mirror (Joan is Awful), which is strikingly similar to Netflix. Anyone can now ‘subscribe’ to the platform; To register, you need to upload a photo, which can even end up on a billboard.
Upon signing up, you’re required to provide a consent-to-continue statement, according to which Netflix can freely use the uploaded image in its marketing campaign – if you’ve watched the episode, you should probably think twice before giving your consent. With your consent, Streamberry will also create a sticker with your photo and name because Joan’s next star is awful.
And Netflix isn’t really kidding: the uploaded images are really part of the Black Mirror marketing campaign in Great Britain, and the images have already appeared on several billboards in London.
Pictures were taken by Black Mirror Twitter account posts, so it’s definitely an effective marketing campaign,” writes A Mashable.
In the episode, the CEO of Streamberry explains to a journalist how content that doesn’t show users in the best light – and that distorts their lives – is uploaded to the platform: the company creates an entire multiverse and uses algorithm and user monitoring to produce the show.
Our goal is to unlock unique, personalized content for each person in our database, all 800 million our system generates on the go. The most relevant content imaginable
Says the CEO in the episode. This is exactly what the Netflix marketing team is doing right now. If you sign up and suddenly your face greets you on a billboard, you have to suffer the consequences.
Cover image source: Shutterstock
