Bouygues hid 20 Netflix references in one ad and dared France to find them

BETC made a film promoting Bouygues Telecom's Netflix bundle, to run on French TV and online from July 2019, with an official web challenge attached.

A teenage boy is chilling in front of Netflix on his phone when the battery dies; his desperate quest for a charger ends on the couch beside his cunning mother — guess who hid it. Scattered through the film are 20 references to Netflix Originals, from the easy Stranger Things lights down to nods even committed binge-watchers struggle to spot, all playable on the official challenge site.

The ad ran on French TV from July 2019, and the challenge site turned a 90-second media buy into a replayable hunt — viewers returned to the film to find what they missed.

French telecom company Bouygues teamed up with Netflix on a film with a hidden challenge, created by BETC to promote a new offer: new premium phone and internet subscribers get a year of access to HD and multiple-screen Netflix.

The film itself is the pitch. A typical teenage boy is watching Netflix on his phone when the battery suddenly runs out; we follow his desperate quest for a charger to finish his episode, which ends with him watching on the couch next to his cunning mother — the one who hid the charger. Hidden inside the film are 20 references to Netflix Original shows, and it is the viewers' job to find them.

Spotting them is genuinely hard. The lights from Stranger Things are flagged as the easiest; the other 19 take a closer look or two, and even committed Netflix bingers with trained eyes struggle. An official challenge on a dedicated site let viewers test themselves, and the ad ran on French TV from July 2019.

The audience's own fluency in Netflix lore becomes the engagement mechanic — the reward for spotting references is feeling like a true binger.

Hidden-object games replay: each rewatch of the film is another chance to catch a reference, stretching one media buy into repeated attention.

The storyline dramatizes the product truth — a dead battery mid-episode is unbearable — inside a joke the whole household recognizes.

When the product is a bundle of content, make the ad itself proof of the bundle: a film stuffed with streaming lore sells a Netflix offer better than any tagline.

The campaign ran on French television from July 2019 alongside the digital challenge; LBBOnline flagged it as a surprisingly difficult spot-the-reference game. No viewership or participation figures are recorded in the coverage.