A Data-Driven Analysis of the Warrior Nun Franchise and #SaveWarriorNun Campaign

Why you should buy Warrior None from Netflix. The story of a fandom overturning a cancellation. Thanks for taking a few moments to tune into this as we talk through the business case for another company, another streaming platform to look at the uh Warrior Nun franchise, which uh previously aired on Netflix and consider investing in it and whether it uh whether it makes sense for a business to do so. This is not the story of just a bunch of eager fans tweeting about things, but a careful look at the business implications of it. Here's the timeline of what's happened so far.

On November 10th, Netflix released season two of the show. On November 24th, it really received the highest ever audience reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. Then uh quite to everyone's surprise, the show was canceled by Netflix on December 13th, and the fan movement, save Warrior None, which is uh what you're seeing here, is responsible for uh promoting it and trying to convince Netflix to continue the story. On January 3rd, the petition that we launched reached over 100,000 signatures. On January 6th, the show uh now stood at 8,500 user ratings, maintaining a 100% favorable rating.

And on January 11th, the uh movement reached six million uh individual posts on social media, mostly on Twitter. But again, this isn't the story of just a bunch of fans. It's a look at the business case for a franchise as someone else continuing the franchise. We're going to talk about it in five parts: social media attention, media coverage, purchase intent, franchise quality, and improved efficiency. Let's start with social media attention.

Social media attention is all about mobilizing a fan base. Every dollar you spend on marketing is a dollar unavailable for production, for making a better show, for making uh a bigger splash, for hiring more talent, uh, even for for improved margins. What's unique about the Warrior Nun franchise is its dedicated fan base. This fan base creates crazy visibility. In just a 45-day time frame, uh, fanbase has accrued millions of engagements on major social networks, and as of the time of this recording on January 18th, uh, enough mainstream media coverage that it reached uh 1.2 billion page views in publications like Looper, Collider, Screen Rant, IMDB, and Time magazine.

Let's take a look at some of the details of how this benefits uh a potential future platform. When we look at the fan base's engagement, since the cancellation, we see a strong continued amount of engagement over time. So this is not just a flash in the pan. This is a bunch of uh fans, and we're talking hundreds of thousands of them, urging people to participate in the movement over a long period of time. This is a sustained engagement.

The fan base is not only there, but it's highly energized. As part of the campaign, folks were asked to share specific phrases or specific themes every single day. Again, to motivate folks to participate with something other than just repeating yourself. And these themes uh range from quotes from the show or uh fun plays on words to even just silly things like memes of uh of various types of lettuce and other uh edible greens. But the hidden implication here is that the fan base is really good at sharing not just a broad encouragement, but very specific themes.

And for folks who are marketing the show, it's a great way to say, well, if there are specific angles that we want to market the show in the future, the fan base is clearly willing and eager to play a part in that. When we look at the geography of the social media engagement, we see that this is not just limited to one nation. Certainly there are some nations that participate more than others, but we definitely see this is a global phenomenon. For the social media engagement, we're talking uh engagements on every single continent on earth, uh, except for Antarctica. I don't believe anyone from Antarctica has uh has tweeted in support of it yet.

Uh, and it is in countries uh of every single language. Uh it is uh an incredibly uh diverse reach. When we look at the petition, the petition, uh, over a hundred thousand signatures on this, and again, the distribution of signatures on the petition is all over the place. There are, of course, the usual tens of thousands of petitions from big countries like uh the United States or Brazil, but there are also signatures from places I think there's only really 13 countries that don't have signatures on the petition. We have three from Vatican City itself, which uh is appropriate given the theme of the show.

The next step is looking at the media coverage. The media coverage, the news coverage of the show is important because it's validation from third parties that the franchise is noteworthy, newsworthy, and remarkable, worthy of being remarked on, being remarked about. Again, when you're talking about cutting through the noise in an ever increasingly distracting world, something that has brand recognition, something that has presence of mind, mind share, is an easier way to build and grow your brand than trying to build something from scratch, or it can augment an existing strong brand and make it even stronger. The fan base of Warrior None is so motivated to support the show that major publications around the world have taken notice. When we look at key coverage, this is coverage where the show is the highlight of the coverage.

We see dozens of articles each week. And in fact, um, again, as of the time of this recording, uh, the week of January 16th has been the largest uh coverage uh that we've seen from publications that we've heard of. Some of them, Comic Book Report or Breaker Room, uh Cinema Blend, Veronica, Hello Magazine, um uh Sudecha Zerong, uh, Screen Rant, Jagron in India, of course, Collider, Looper, Time Magazine, publications that people know well that reach beyond just the fandom. And that's a critical and important point. A publication that maybe just serves a a trade publication or an industry or a specific demographic is good.

We want awareness, but when we see tier 1 publications like Yahoo News and Screen Rant and Time magazine covering the movement, we know that it has reached far beyond just a specific base of fans. And again, as of the time of this recording, the number of page views for these media pieces in total was approximately 1.2 billion. We also see that Warrior is part of additional stories. Again, Netflix has been doing some uh canceling of other shows, uh, and Warrior None is part of that conversation, indicating that even when the focus of a news piece is some other show, if it's about cancellation, if it's about franchises that maybe deserve a second look, warrior none is still in the conversation. Part three, purchase intent.

All the attention doesn't really matter if it doesn't convert, right? If it doesn't uh transform into demand from the audience for the franchise itself and by extension, the streaming platform that it's airing on. If you have that demand, if you have that intent, uh you can turn that into real subscribers. How do we know that a show will have an audience? Again, social media data, we know social media data is it's fun, it's loud, it's attention getting.

But search data, what people type into search engines like Google or Bing or ask their uh smart devices about that information's private. And people people search for things privately that they might not necessarily say in public, right? Um, some people might not even admit to their search history under duress but search is such a clear signal of intent and we see that in the warrior none search demand current and forecasted search demand for warrior should warrior none shows a growing fan base when we look at the search volume since 2018 through the cancellation of the show which is denoted by the vertical line on the graph this fan base keeps growing and growing and growing in terms of people searching for the show going to Google in any location around the world and typing in terms like Warrior None watch warrior none Warrior None season two stream warrior none and so on and so forth this search volume continues to increase we did uh use some predictive analytics software to forecast what that demand looks like going ahead into 2024 there's a lot of demand there's still a lot of demand so an acquiring platform would not only have an audience that's available today but would keep growing like the the value of the asset the value of the franchise continues to grow um in terms of people searching for it this of course um does not include things like the fan movement that has started in just the last month or so that data is still too new to be seen in search data but you can be pretty sure with as much noise as the fans are making and the coverage that the movement is getting that interest by people who are not in the fan base, just by virtue of seeing the articles, seeing the magazine pieces, seeing the the videos, will continue to increase and maybe even accelerate. So by continuing the story of Warrior None, you're bringing in an ever-increasing audience. Let's talk about part four.

This is franchise quality. Now, no entertainment franchise, no matter how well marketed, will have staying power without quality of content, right? Without people finding emotional resonance in the show. Warrior None delivers that quality in spades with top ratings and reviews and exceptional demand as measured by third parties, all fan-led. It's important to note that Netflix really didn't put any marketing dollars into the second season of the show.

None. Comparing season one with an audience score of 95% and a critic score of uh uh tomato meter of 69% to season two, when audience scores went up to 99% and uh 100% on the tomato meter. The quality got better in season two, which again is relatively rare, um, particularly for new shows. When we look at uh completion rates, completion rates are the percentage of people who from the beginning of a season of the show reached the end, right? They've watched all the content.

And when we look at season one versus season two, the completion rates were consistently higher across the board, meaning that more people were tuning into the show and sticking with it, showing that the the content has quality. And again, as most folks know who've been in the entertainment industry for a while, you really start to gel. You really start to hit your stride around season three, season four. If you look at even older franchises like Star Trek, for example, Star Trek The Next Generation, they really hit their stride in season three. You look at something like Lucifer.

Um, it really started to hit its stride around season three. So if the numbers are this good for Warrior Nun in only season two, imagine what a third and a fourth and a fifth season would look like for those completion rates. When we look at global digital streaming, this is the top 10 in-demand shows. This is from uh Parrot Analytics. Look at how strong the average demand is for Orion.

There's the uh bright purple line in the middle there. This is audiences actually seeking to watch the show on the streaming platforms compared to other uh digital shows. Compared to major other major competitors, Warrior None with no promotion, no help, uh, except for the fan base, was able to stay in the middle of the pack and sustain that all the way into January, well after its cancellation. Well after season two dropped, even though season two was uh was published uh back in November, the the base has stayed with the demand for the show and for people watching the show and introducing it to others has remained consistently high throughout that period of time. When we look at the demand versus market originals, right?

So these are uh just some big uh promotional shows, shows that received a lot of promotion. Um, Warrior None remains in the outstanding segment, and remains in extremely high demand despite having no promotional budget. When you compare it to the promotion dollars that Netflix invested in Wednesday, the Tim Burton show, um, which was uh more of a mini-series, that had things like bus wraps and billboards in Times Square and ad dollars thrown at it in every direction. And yet this property that they invested nothing in has stayed consistently strong in the outstanding category. Again, according to Parrot Analytics, which looks at uh market uh digital originals and all uh streamed video content.

When we look at the global success, the global levels of daily demand uh at Warrior None between season one and season two, we see pretty clearly season one dropped off, right? From the day the season was available to about 60 days out. You can see that it uh the sea the first season really saw a drop of intention from uh that outstanding category into uh from the the great categories into sort of outstanding, it's good, it's still got attention, but season two has remained exceptional. And if you look at the graph, actually, not only has season two remained sort of stable, it's actually starting to increase a little at the time of this uh recording. So from uh a third-party validation perspective, season two is objectively just better content.

And if we look outside into other vendors, uh IMDB's ratings, this is the ratings by season for five different shows. Thirteen reasons Why, Bridgerton, Lucifer, Stranger Things, and Warrior None. For season one, the ratings were pretty good, going from uh around 7.3 to about 8.1, 8.2 by the end of the season. But by the end of season two, the ratings climbed to a all-time high of nine by the end of the series. This show got better and better to the audience every single episode.

Compare that to similar shows uh from the same platform where you don't see that just linear growth upwards in terms of audience approbation. Even in terms of voting, uh, the number of votes per episode. Uh we see consistent growth here for Warrior None in the and the purple there. Whereas most other franchises, over time, uh, as episodes continue on, you see the voting kind of drop off. People lose interest.

It's the they're just not as engaged with the show. This show has staying power. All of that has to translate into money, right? Uh, and there's two, well, really, three different aspects of the financial implications for someone who acquires the franchise. Um, those three pillars are acquisition, retention, and monetization.

At the end of the day, we know that any entertainment platform, uh streaming or otherwise, needs to get new subscribers, has to retain existing subscribers, and has to make money on those subscribers, has to extract uh value from them. The Warrior Nun franchise offers a unique lucrative opportunity for a forward-thinking platform willing to commit to the fan base as much as the fan base is willing to commit to the show. Let's talk about efficiencies first on the acquisition side. When we look at the traffic value, the money that you would spend to acquire the same level of organic unpaid search traffic that Warrior None has accrued since 2018. You'd have had to spend over $100,000 in search ad costs to get that same audience.

And instead, because of that rabid fan base, you have uh you have this essentially free marketing. Some months, according to spy foo.com, which is a digital advertising tool that can look at competitive expenditures uh on Google ads. Some months, the fan base and the folks interested in the show, uh, the traffic exceeded what Netflix was spending on ads that month. It's just a that's how strong the interest is in the show. And as we were talking about early on, when you have a dedicated fan base, they are doing some of the marketing for you.

Every dollar that you put into market is amplified by 10 times or 100 times based on how how dedicated and passionate the fans are and how willing they are to spread your message to market the show. Netflix spent nothing on it, and yet the fans still delivered enormous amounts of value. So let's talk more about the value and the costs, the acquisition costs. Suppose you were a streaming platform that wanted to compete with Netflix. According to uh the tools from Visual DNA and StackAdapt, which is a display and connected TV advertising vendor, the Netflix audience, which is approximately 112 million people globally, that this platform can reach with connected TV ads, that cost to reach them on connected TV, which is again where Netflix is predominantly watched, is about $40 and 80 cents a CPM cost per thousand for those who are unfamiliar.

If you don't know the advertising industry, well, it's what you pay to reach a to show your ad a thousand times. So in this case, uh you would spend one uh you spend $40.80 to reach 1,000 uh displays of your ad. To reach that audience, maybe to woo them away from Netflix and advertise a new and different streaming platform would cost you $4.5 million to reach for a single campaign where you just showed your ad once to all 112 million people in the Netflix audience. Now imagine maybe say you only advertise to 10% of the audience, but maybe you realize you had to show your ad to them more than once ever. You had to show them to 10 times, 20 times, once a day, five times a day, just to persuade them that hey, check out this streaming service other than Netflix.

Over a 13-week period, because of that high CPM, that $40.80 CPM, it would cost you more than the production of an entire season of Warrior None and a $10 million dollar ad budget just to try and woo those people away using display advertising on connected TVs. If you were to acquire the Warrior None franchise instead, you would have that audience built in. You would have the people built in who are interested in the show. And again, maybe it's only 10% of them, but as we saw from Parrot Analytics, demand is still very strong for this franchise. So for it to move to a different platform, bring some of those people over.

So you're not just acquiring the intellectual property, you are also acquiring the audience. And that's not all. Just because you attract someone to your new platform or your network, uh, or you announce that a show is now available, it doesn't necessarily mean that you keep them with general audiences. And that's what's special about the Wario Nun audience. You keep an audience when they have a good reason to be loyal to you.

Purchasing and promoting uh Wario Nun's audience comes with a variety of different people who watch the show. We're going to focus on one specific segment. And that segment is the LGBTQ plus an ally audience. This is a fiercely loyal audience. Uh, folks who are willing to go to, as you can see from the campaign, uh extraordinary ends to stick with a franchise.

LB Digital estimates that audience is about 110 million people in the USA alone, uh, globally obviously much larger. Not only is the LGBTQ an ally audience uh large, it's also valuable, right? ICX Media estimates that the connected TV CPM to reach LGBTQ and ally audiences is at $42.50. That's higher than Netflix's audience value. So this particular audience segment is more expensive.

If you acquired them by just acquiring uh additional Warrior None seasons, because of that loyalty, because of that fierce loyalty, you would keep them, you would not spend money on retention. One of the biggest problems with any kind of service is your churn. It's it's how fast you lose customers. If you are spending ad dollars like crazy to replace lost customers, again, that's money that you don't have for production. That's not money you don't have to get off to get new customers in the door.

If you bring in a franchise like Warrior None, that audience is going to be incredibly loyal. You will not have to spend money to retain them. In fact, the opposite's true. Um, that audience might actually make you money. For streaming platforms that have advertising support, again, look at that CPM number, 4250 CPM.

That is one of the most expensive audiences that's available in the connected TV advertising world. The only audiences that are more expensive are healthcare audiences with specific medical conditions. If you are an advertising supported streaming platform, you know that the Warrior None audience, which assuming you've acquired it, is valuable, and you if you show them ads, guess what? Now you can charge those CPMs to other advertisers, right? So you will actually make money from this audience that you acquire along with the franchise.

So those are the three pillars, the financial pillars that make up why a platform should buy Warrior from Netflix. Clearly, Netflix has dramatically underestimated its own fan base. They have dramatically underestimated the passion of that fan base. And it's most curious because in the Q3 earnings transcripts, they were talking about the ad supported tier. And yet, this audience is such an expensive audience to reach.

It seems unusual that they would not have uh thought to monetize it that way. Hopefully, another platform looking at the data will be able to make use of that. We want to take a few moments here at the end to thank our partners who have generously donated time, resources, software, and data to make this analysis possible. The premier partner, of course, Parrot Analytics, providing the streaming uh data so that we could get a true sense of what the uh performance of Warrior None has been on SVOD platforms. Also want to thank TalkWalker, SEMRush, brand 24, and Trust Insights.

Thanks for tuning into this. If you've got questions, please feel free to ask them. Uh, we look forward to hearing your reactions to this. Take care.