MUH-TAY-ZIK | HOF-FER cofounder John Matejczyk holds the unusual distinction of being creatively involved at two key points along Netflix’s evolution from mail-order movie delivery service to video streaming behemoth.

Before starting MUH-TAY-ZIK | HOF-FER (the agency’s moniker is a phonetic spelling of his and cofounder Matt Hoffher’s last names), while still a group creative director and copywriter at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in 2006, he wrote the spot “One Billion.” That cinematic commercial depicted a world that included Netflix as one overrun by archetypal movie characters ranging from giant spiders to Imperial storm troopers to Hobbit-like dwarves. “Nearly 1 billion movies delivered so far,” concluded the ad, “zero late fees.”

Nearly eight years and a total-disruption-of-video-media-as-we-know-it later, the agency Matejczyk co-founded now heads up Netflix’s social media output, creating daily digital Facebook, Vine, Twitter and Instagram content for one of the world’s most iconic digital brands.

Heading up social media for a digital dynamo like Netflix may seem like a daunting challenge, but MUH-TAY-ZIK | HOF-FER, which won Ad Age’s 2014 Small Agency of the Year, is uniquely equipped to serve it. While social media content wasn’t really even a thing yet during Matejczyk’s years at Goodby, he did “have the good fortune” of being there “during the rise of digital,” he told Brief. As the new social-media paradigm began to sweep into advertising, “other agencies scrambled to meet the new demand, starting digital divisions and silos, etc.,” he said. “But at Goodby we just embraced digital as another tool in the tool box. That trained me to be super versatile.”

As a result, the creative work at MUH-TAY-ZIK | HOF-FER is integrated, and does not have separate divisions for digital content’s separate facets. Instead, its social media marketing efforts are “work that flows through the agency just like a TV commercial would,” Matejczyk said. “We have our best creative directors overseeing the work… Creatively, it gets us much attention as anything else in the agency.”

Treating each type of media in a campaign with equal clout allows for the “high degree of versatility” required “to do everything that does well in the market,” said Matejczyk. And indeed, from the get-go, the diversity and innovation of the agency’s output has been jaw-dropping.

Its first major job, for tech company PGI and its online conference call tool iMeet, was essentially product development – a three-year opus involving everything from a logo redesign to a TV launch, to a new user interface. Since then, MUH-TAY-ZIK | HOF-FER has tackled projects ranging from viral videos (one example below) for the custom stationary purveyor Tiny Prints (which was subsequently bought out by Shutterfly for more than $300 million) to the award-winning mobile app and website Slavery Footprint, which used an online survey method to help consumers become more aware of the reality of modern-day slavery in their supply chains.

Whatever MUH-TAY-ZIK | HOF-FER is working on, its process involves “finding the platform of the brand,” said Matejczyk. “If you have a platform for a brand, it prepares the way for everything you need to do whether that’s product development, your voice, a TV campaign, [or even] your [customer relationship management].”

In 2011, MUH-TAY-ZIK | HOF-FER started working with the Golden State Warriors, at a time when the basketball team was attempting to rebrand itself as a contender, but was still putting the pieces in place to back up that claim. To find the team’s platform, the agency “looked at the warriors in the same way the team ownership would,” said Matejczyk. “Lets make the five-year plan. What’s year one? Year two? Year three?”

With no marquee players to rally around during its first season on the account, the agency sought to recast the Warriors as the entire Bay Area’s team, and not just an Oakland or San Francisco team. It established a closer connection between players and fans by creating spots that simply showed what it was like to train with the Warriors, thereby “giving a sense of ownership with the team throughout the whole Bay Area,” said Matejczyk.

In Season 2, the team’s rebuilding plan was unfolding and its popularity growing. So MUH-TAY-ZIK | HOF-FER leveraged its platform with a socially driven campaign. An open casting call at the Warriors training facility was broadcast on social media and allowed fans to audition to be in commercials with the players.

For Season 3, the current season (during which the Warriors have become one of the league’s best teams), the agency decided to forgo thinking about TV spots at all during the planning phase, instead aiming to “just think of a cool way to engage on the street level with fans,” said Matejczyk. And so, the “Dub Truck” was born, a food truck-like vehicle capable of showing up at events, neighborhoods and businesses, where it could then draw fans with purchasable gear and other engagement opportunities. From there, it made sense to activate the truck on television with a Super Fan telling tall tales of Warriors yore from within it. Fans were also encouraged to take pics of themselves in front of the vehicle and share on Instagram under the hashtag #dubtruck.

MUH-TAY-ZIK | HOF-FER’s versatility seems to have reached a new high point in its work on Netflix’s social media, for whom it created and produced nearly 60 original videos during its first six months on the campaign alone, including a trailer and behind-the-scenes mini-doc for everyone’s favorite streaming holiday classic, “Fireplace for Your Home.”

Additionally, the agency posts daily content across all the relevant sites. Examples include Instagram “feels” such as “That ‘Back to School’ Feel” featuring a classic clip from Arrested Development; Vine “Living Posters” such as this lovely moment from the film Fargo; and amazing Twitter gifs. It’s built out some big initiatives as well, such as Netflix Spoilers, a bonus site consisting of little more than a big red button and a seemingly endless array of movie spoilers. It’s up to the visitor to decide if they would push the button – and more than 9 million did during the site’s first week of existence.

Social media content in general is a perfect fit for MUH-TAY-ZIK | HOF-FER “from a content development standpoint,” said Matejczyk, “because we are able to make things very quickly with a solid platform, and it doesn’t always have to be about massive production value. Getting out there and being scrappy and quick in production enables us to start filling those pipelines with some great content.

“There’s a big transition that’s happening… [in] how creative people are natively thinking first about brands,” he continued. “Five or 10 years ago it was definitely, ‘here’s the TV spot we want – now let’s figure out how to support it in social/digital.’ Now, younger generations raised on Reddit say, ‘here’s the cool things this brand could do,’ and it’s like, ‘OK, but what’s the TV spot?’”

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