Innova University in Veracruz went viral this week with the publicity posted to their social media channels about its specialty degree programs.
The tyrannical headmistress Miss Trunchbull from the movie Matilda advertises the courses in teaching. Hannibal Lector in full straitjacket and mask announces the psychology degree and Saul Goodman, the shady lawyer from the hit TV series Better Call Saul, encourages future lawyers to join the law program, saying there is a difference between being a criminal lawyer and a lawyer who’s a criminal.
The publicity coincided with the university’s announcement that they would provide scholarships to cover up to 50% of the school fees for their new degree programs.
The publicity for the degree courses has received thousands of likes and comments on Facebook and greatly enhanced the visibility of a university unknown to many students before this.
Instead of experiencing fallout from using proprietary images that aren’t in the public domain, it seems that the university has received nothing but positive feedback from this publicity gamble. The school has gotten the attention of the Mexican arm of Netflix, the giant streaming service conglomerate which always keeps on top of viral trends on social media. The company produced its own parody advertisements using characters from its most popular series. Mob boss Thomas Shelby from Peaky Blinders publicizes the business administration program, Woo Young-woo from Extraordinary Attorney Woo is teaching law, and Number Five from the Umbrella Academy, engineering.
“Because you can’t take your future lightly,” says the Netflix post, “come study today at UNINETFLIS, the University for you.”
Perhaps this viral marketing campaign will become part of the publicity degree curriculum at Innova, with a minor in Netflix binging?
With reports from Milenio and Publimetro
