Entertainment
Launch of Netflix Originals
Architecting the earned media strategy and PR launch of Netflix Originals — the announcement that changed how the world watches television
$100M+
Reported value of the House of Cards deal
9
Emmy nominations for House of Cards S1 — first ever for a streaming-only series
3M+
New subscribers added worldwide in Q1 2013 following House of Cards premiere
First
Streaming service to produce original scripted content at this scale
Netflix (via ID PR)
Account Lead, Netflix · ID PR
Earned media strategy & execution, announcement architecture, originals launch PR, show-level publicity, press narrative development, media relations across entertainment and business verticals
2010–2012
2010
Netflix account engagement begins — ID PR brought on as agency of record as Netflix navigates the transition from DVD-by-mail to streaming platform and eyes a new chapter.
Mar 2011
Netflix Originals announcement — House of Cards deal breaks in Deadline as an exclusive. A streaming service outbids HBO and AMC for prestige content. Industry coverage is immediate and global.
2011
First-wave originals pipeline publicized — Lilyhammer, House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, and others announced and positioned in press as a coherent originals strategy, not isolated acquisitions.
Feb 2012
Lilyhammer premieres — the first Netflix Original to stream. Feb 6, 2012. All-episode binge model introduced. Press coverage frames it as the beginning of a new era in television.
2012
Orange is the New Black greenlit — Jenji Kohan's series commissioned. Early earned media groundwork laid as part of the sustained originals narrative being built in press.
Feb 2013
House of Cards S1 drops — 9 Emmy nominations. Netflix stock jumps 70% in the week prior. The PR infrastructure built over two years absorbs the moment and extends it.
The moment a streaming service became a content company
In 2010, Netflix was a streaming platform that licensed other people’s content. By 2012, it was something no one had a word for yet: a technology company that was also a television studio, releasing prestige drama at a scale that had cable networks, Hollywood studios, and legacy broadcasters scrambling to respond. I was brought in as account lead at ID PR to help architect the earned media strategy for that transformation — from the first originals announcement through the launch of House of Cards and the full first-wave originals pipeline. The work covered every dimension of the story: entertainment press, business and financial media, technology coverage, and the cultural narrative that would ultimately reframe how the world thought about television.
Announcing something the industry didn’t have a category for
The challenge wasn’t generating coverage — it was generating the right coverage. Netflix announcing it would produce original content was genuinely unprecedented. There was no playbook. Legacy media treated it as a curiosity or a threat. The entertainment press didn’t know whether to cover it as a tech story or a Hollywood story. Financial media was skeptical. Our job was to frame the announcement before the framing happened to us — to position this as a defining strategic move, not an experiment, and to build a sustained press narrative that would hold through a multi-year originals pipeline rather than peak and recede after a single announcement cycle.
Building the narrative infrastructure before the content existed
We approached this as a two-phase campaign. Phase one was announcement architecture: controlling how the House of Cards deal broke, which outlets got the exclusive, and how the originals strategy was framed — as a coherent programming vision, not a series of isolated acquisitions. Phase two was sustained narrative management: keeping Netflix Originals in cultural conversation through the full development pipeline, from Lilyhammer’s quiet premiere through the House of Cards launch. This meant working across entertainment and business verticals simultaneously, managing the tension between the company’s tech identity and its new content ambitions, and building relationships with the journalists and critics who would define the category.
The infrastructure held when the moment arrived
When House of Cards dropped in February 2013, the PR infrastructure built over two years absorbed the moment and extended it. Nine Emmy nominations — the first ever for a streaming-only series. Netflix stock jumped 70% in the week prior to the premiere. Three million new subscribers added worldwide in Q1 2013. The coverage wasn’t just volume — it was the right narrative, in the right outlets, at the right moment. The story we’d been building for three years became the story the industry told itself about what had just happened to television.
The announcement that satisfies the algorithm is never the one that changes the conversation.
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