De México p’al mundo y viceversa: Netflix’s branding articulations in the domestic Mexican market

Branding has become a quintessential practice in modern day media corporations. The current globalized marketplace where there is an abundance of local (and global) identities, tastes and preferences, prompt companies to think globally, yet act locally. Netflix, as a global company that operates in distinct domestic marketplaces, has tailored its branding strategies to fit the local environments in which it exists. The Latin American market was one of Netflix’s first strategic marketplaces for expansion in 2011 and has become one of the corporation’s biggest markets. While recent research has begun with the investigation of Netflix’s branding strategies in specific domestic markets, little research has focused on Netflix’s local branding strategies in countries pertaining to the LATAM market. Therefore, the aim of this thesis is to find out what local articulations are present in one specific Latin American country: Mexico. The relevant research questions were the following: What are Netflix’s branding strategies in Mexico? What are Netflix’s local articulations in the Mexican market? In order to find an answer to these questions, this thesis employed a thematic content analysis. The systematic process entailed the creation of an initial and final coding frame which revealed the following themes: ‘innovation’, ‘accessibility’, ‘content’, ‘local articulations’, ‘the Netflix experience’ and ‘competitors’. These themes reflected that Netflix employed three distinct branding approaches: portalas-brand, portal-as-content and portal-as-producer. The latter is a new discourse that has scarcely been discussed in contemporary academic studies. Thus, when entering the Mexican market Netflix utilized a branding approach consistent with its global discourse, yet local elements were added to increase the relevance of the platform to the domestic market by emphasizing its (local) content on the platform. This approach changed once Netflix started identifying as a content producer in the Mexican market. The research in this thesis has shown that Netflix’s intentions as a content producer – at least in Mexico – is to bring global content to the local market, but also bring the local content to the global market.