CONTEXT:
December in Romania, a season of warmth, family, and high-stakes cooking traditions. To build anticipation for “Squid Game” Season 2, we leaned into this contrast, creating a 95-second cinematic piece that merged the show’s survival tension with the pressure-filled joy of Romanian Christmas.
Instead of avoiding the clash between Squid Game’s intensity and local festivity, we turned it into a cultural collision: global IP meets local insight. Enter the Balkan Granny: the fearless matriarch ruling the holiday kitchen. In Romania, grandmothers embody both love and pressure, especially around three sacred dishes: boeuf salad, homemade sausages, and “cozonac” cake. Each became a “Christmas game,” where one culinary slip meant “elimination.”
Visually crafted with cinematic precision yet born for social feeds, the film combines dark humor and tradition to deliver a deeply relatable, shareable story. It broke platform norms: 75% of views came from non-followers, engagement grew +263% on Instagram, and average watch time tripled on Facebook, with over 96% organic reach.
Beyond metrics, the real success was in the comments: audiences saw themselves. They shared family stories, laughed at generational pressures, and celebrated authentic Romanian culture with a pinch of “Squid Game”.
