The Refinery created key art and large-scale international OOH for Netflix’s Lift — airport takeovers, subway dominations, transit wraps, building wraps, freeway wall wraps, digital billboards, teaser art, character banners, and ensemble key art built to launch a global action film at scale. The campaign supported a debut that hit #1 globally in its first week, with 32.8 million views and 58.5 million hours watched. Lift held #1 for three straight weeks and finished the first half of 2024 with 129.4 million cumulative views.
The challenge
Lift needed to feel as big as its premise: an international heist film built around ensemble energy, global movement, and gold bars in very inconvenient quantities.
The campaign had to work across a wide range of outdoor formats, from airport takeovers and subway dominations to building sides, freeway wall wraps, transit wraps, and digital billboards. Each placement needed to work on its own while still feeling connected to one campaign system.
The idea
The Refinery built the campaign around a visual system that could expand. The key art established the world of the film, while the gold-brick motif gave the OOH a flexible visual shorthand that could scale across formats.
A teaser could focus on gold bricks. A bus could look like gold bricks. Airport wraps could stretch the campaign through travel corridors. Subway and freeway placements could bring the campaign into public movement.
What The Refinery made
Key art campaign: primary key art, teaser art, character banners, and ensemble key art.
International OOH: digital billboards, static billboards, extension boards, Netflix HQ placements, vertical billboards, building sides, multi-wall billboards, and freeway wall wraps.
Airport takeovers: international airport placements in France, South Africa, Brazil, and New York, including hallway wraps, elevator wraps, reskins, and multi-panel takeovers.
Transit and subway: subway domination, stair wraps, pillar wraps, static and digital station placements, and multiple transit wraps, including a bus wrap designed to look like it was made of gold bricks.
Production: production artwork, finishing, versioning, and final delivery across international OOH formats.
Why it worked
The campaign worked because the outdoor system felt as ambitious as the movie. It did not simply resize the key art across surfaces. It translated the campaign idea across different environments, traffic patterns, markets, and viewing behaviors.
The gold-brick motif gave the campaign a consistent visual language, while the breadth of placements gave Lift the scale of a global Netflix release. The Refinery functioned as both a creative and production partner, helping carry one campaign idea across airports, subways, buildings, buses, freeways, billboards, and international markets.
A lot of surfaces. One campaign language.
Project details
Client: Netflix
Title: Lift
Assignment: Create key art and large-scale international OOH assets for a global streaming film campaign
Project scope: Key art, teaser art, character banners, ensemble key art, international OOH, airport takeovers, subway domination, digital billboards, static billboards, transit wraps, building wraps, freeway wall wraps, production artwork, finishing, and final delivery
Markets: France, South Africa, Brazil, New York, Netflix HQ, and additional global OOH placements