Warning: the following contains SPOILERS for Red Notice.
Red Notice was released in the Philippines via a huge marketing stunt – here’s why it drew so much flak and controversy. Starred by Gal Gadot, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, and Ryan Reynolds, it’s no surprise that it took Netflix a budget of $200 million to make Red Notice. And the numbers show that Netflix made the right investment.
On the new Netflix Global Top 10 website, Red Notice tops the movies list by garnering 148.7 million hours of views, and that’s during its first week alone. Meanwhile, the second and third movies on the list, romcom hit Love Hard and neo spaghetti western The Harder They Fall, respectively garnered only 58.5 million and 33 million hours of views, despite spending already two weeks on the streaming platform. In short, even though Red Notice was met with largely negative reviews, it’s on track to become the most popular movie in the history of Netflix. While the story of Cleopatra’s three bejeweled eggs may not be real, Red Notice’s success is certainly more than enough to make a mark on streaming history. That being said, it’s not all good news for Netflix’s blockbuster heist movie.
Red Notice’s local marketing efforts in the Philippines might’ve taken things too far. On November 4, 2021, a bit past midnight, legitimate Filipino news outlet Rappler reported that, according to the management of Metro Manila’s SM Mall of Asia, the mall’s iconic gigantic LED globe was stolen. Although Rappler used its #BrandRap hashtag, which supposedly identifies sponsored content, the story was crafted to look like a legitimate developing news story and not an advertisement or product placement for Red Notice. This was followed by blurry dashcam footage showing the globe being taken by a helicopter, which went viral on social media. At around 8:00 AM of the same day, CNN Philippines picked up the news and showed the globe covered in plywood with a sign that says “under maintenance.” Later, at around 1:40 pM, the Manila Bulletin released a report involving the Pasay City police, which clarified that the globe wasn’t stolen from SM Mall of Asia. In short, Netflix PH, SM Mall of Asia, and Rappler came up with what might be the most effective movie marketing stunt in Philippine advertising history. Unfortunately, it came at the cost of contributing to the spread of fake news in the Philippines.
Although the marketing stunt ended up being infinitely more interesting than Red Notice’s bad plot twist, Rappler has been criticized for using native advertising to hide behind releasing fake news. Native advertising is a branding method in which sponsored content mimics the native look and feel of different release platforms, including blogs and news websites. And by only using its #BrandRap hashtag and not clearly labeling its post as a paid or sponsored advertisement, critics say that Rappler knowingly released fake news on its platforms.
Ironically, during the last couple years, Rappler has been at the forefront of the fight against fake news and attacks against journalists in the Philippines. Alongside Rappler’s #BrandRap native advertising arm, the digital publication also has a dedicated Fact Check section. Rappler’s Nobel Peace Prize-winning CEO Maria Ressa, along with several other reporters, have been slapped with libel cases and flooded with death threats for Rappler’s previous reports on corrupt government deals, the administration’s alleged use of fake news, and the ongoing bloody drug war in the Philippines. While the Philippine National Police reports that over 6,000 drug suspects have been killed since President Rodrigo Duterte launched an aggressive campaign against methamphetamine sale and use in 2016, human rights organizations and news outlets, including Rappler, estimate that the actual deaths are about thrice the official police count.
Apart from distorting the drug war death toll, fake news has allegedly been used in the Philippines to discredit journalists and civil society organizations, whitewash Filipino history, and win elections. In the fight against fake news, Rappler’s involvement in the Red Notice Mall of Asia globe marketing stunt is a big step backward for legitimate journalism in the Philippines. However, despite the backlash and the generally bad reviews, the movie’s runaway success could mean that a Red Notice sequel might already be in the works.