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Maraya Tifres, lead campaign strategy at RTL/Videoland in the Netherlands, was awarded the GEMA EmpowerHer Spotlight Honor at GEMA Europe in Amsterdam in June.

EmpowerHer shines a light on women working in entertainment marketing – supporting their growth, connecting them to each other, and applauding their achievements. Tifres, as the below reel and interview reveal, exemplifies the message of EmpowerHer as a young executive growing in confidence and creativity. Tifres understands how to tap into fandom to broaden reach using social media, messaging apps, and AI, and has used that knowledge to create innovative campaigns for RTL and its leading local streaming service, Videoland. 

Below, Tifres dives into her approach to entertainment marketing strategy, how she cultivates cultural moments, and why she feels it’s important for women to support women.

Spotlight: As lead campaign strategy at RTL/Videoland, what are your areas of oversight?  

Tifres: I lead a small, talented team of campaign strategists responsible for the marketing strategy behind local streaming service Videoland’s original productions and acquired content. We define the strategic foundation for every campaign, from audience insights and positioning, to the overall campaign direction. We translate that into a creative brief that serves as the starting point for in-house creative development. 

From there, we work closely with our in-house creative studio to challenge and refine the creative concept, key art, and trailers, ensuring every asset stays true to the strategy. Together with our media team, we then bring the campaign to life as a full-funnel marketing strategy, translating the creative concept into a cohesive media plan and campaign execution across all touchpoints. 

Ultimately, it’s about creating campaigns that not only drive subscriptions and viewership, but create cultural moments people genuinely want to be part of. 

Spotlight: RTL owns Videoland, which is a very popular competitor to Netflix in the Netherlands. You work on many shows that air on Videoland, including Mocro Maffia, a campaign for which is featured in the above reel. Can you tell those of us who don't know what Videoland is and what this particular campaign was about?

Tifres: Videoland is a local streaming service that launched in 2014, just one year after Netflix entered the Dutch market. Since then, we’ve grown into the Netherlands’ leading local streaming platform and have maintained a strong runner-up position in an increasingly competitive international streaming landscape. Today, our service offers more than 250 Videoland original productions, including the globally acclaimed drama series Máxima, alongside a broad catalog of international content and local tv programs.

What truly sets Videoland apart is our commitment to telling local stories that are deeply rooted in Dutch culture and become part of everyday conversation. From drama series and reality series to documentaries and kids’ programming, our ambition is to be a bold entertainer that dares to tell a wide range of stories, reflecting the many perspectives, voices, and experiences in our society. 

The campaign featured in that reel was created in 2023 for the sixth and final season of Mocro Maffia, one of Videoland’s most iconic original series with a strong fandom. Rather than simply announcing the final season, we wanted to reward the loyal fanbase with an experience that felt like an extension of the series itself. We invited fans to step into the world of Mocro Maffia through an interactive WhatsApp activation that blurred the line between marketing and storytelling. The campaign went on to win a Best Social Award for best innovation.

Spotlight: What inspired you to create a campaign that was this interactive and what tools did you use to do it successfully?  

‍Tifres: We thrive at the intersection of strategy and creativity, where audience insights become ideas and campaigns become conversations. For us, the starting point is always the fan. Mocro Maffia has one of the most dedicated fan communities I’ve ever seen. Almost un-Dutch in the lengths they’re willing to go for the franchise, their passion became our inspiration. 

After six seasons, we wanted to give those fans one final opportunity to step back into the world they had invested in for years, reward them for their loyalty, and start building anticipation for the final season long before its release. Alongside the official series campaign, we created an interactive WhatsApp experience that felt like an extension of the Mocro Maffia universe. We spread three mysterious phone numbers across our social channels, each belonging to one of the show’s main characters. When fans called, they reached the character’s voicemail, explaining they were busy and asking them to send a WhatsApp message instead. That simple action kicked off a personal conversation. 

From day one, we worked closely with the Mocro Maffia scriptwriters to ensure every conversation felt as though it could have come straight from the series. Together, we wrote authentic dialogue that AI helped scale into thousands of unique one-on-one conversations, while staying true to each character’s distinct voice and personality. Throughout several days, fans received inbound and outbound WhatsApp messages (thanks to our digital activation partner, The Brand Father), including photos and voice memos, making it feel as though they were genuinely in contact with one of the characters. The characters put fans’ knowledge to the test, challenging them with questions to prove their loyalty and earn their trust before rewarding them with exclusive early access to the very first episode of the final season.  

The technology played an important role in making the experience personal and scalable, but what made it successful was that every interaction felt authentic to the Mocro Maffia universe. Rather than simply promoting the final season, we invited fans to become part of it one last time. 

‍Spotlight: Prior to joining Videoland, you were at Warner Bros working on theatricals. What did you learn from that job that has helped you in this one?  

‍Tifres: Working on the distribution side of international theatrical releases for nearly seven years was an incredible experience. I had the opportunity to work on more than 100 releases from Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox and DreamWorks, and it taught me so much about building anticipation, creating cultural moments, and telling stories consistently across every touchpoint. 

As both a strategic and creative marketer, I realized I wanted to be closer to where those ideas were born. Most campaign strategies, creative concepts, and key assets were developed in Burbank before being rolled out across the globe. While localizing those campaigns for the Dutch market was fascinating, I found myself wanting to influence the thinking behind them rather than just the execution. That’s exactly what I found at Videoland. 

Looking back, those years gave me an incredibly strong foundation. Evaluating thousands of creative assets, deciding which materials would resonate most with our local audience, and seeing how elements like key art, trailers, music, and graphic design shaped a campaign trained my creative eye. It taught me how to recognize great storytelling, challenge creative work, and ensure every asset serves the strategy. A mindset I still apply to every campaign today. 

‍Spotlight: That reel also showcased campaigns that had really authentic and effective social tie-ins. Can you talk about one or two such social and interactive campaigns that you have done at RTL and what you think it was about them that made them successful?

Alongside using social media as a promotional channel, we’re always looking for ways to let audiences step deeper into the content universe. That’s a philosophy we’ve applied across multiple Videoland originals. 

A great example is Tonnano. In 2025, we launched a spin-off centered around one of Mocro Maffia‘s most beloved characters. After years of building a loyal fanbase around the original series, our challenge was to keep that audience engaged as the Mocro Maffia content universe expanded. The twist? Tonnano suddenly finds himself undercover at a shady used-car dealership in the Dutch countryside; a setting that immediately sparked conversation because it placed one of the Netherlands’ most feared crime characters in the last place anyone expected to find him. 

We leaned into that contrast by bringing the dealership to life as if it were a real business, complete with its own website and social channels. Behind the seemingly ordinary yet sketchy dealership website was Tonnano’s hidden vault. Access codes were hidden in plain sight – on license plates, in vehicle descriptions, social posts and even in the dealership’s jingle. Fans who uncovered the clues unlocked exclusive content, behind-the-scenes footage, merchandise, and invitations to the premiere event. 

We applied a similar principle to Kees Flodder. Because the story revolves around the arrival of the infamous Flodder family in an upper-class neighborhood, we told the campaign through the residents’ neighborhood WhatsApp group. Audiences became a fly on the wall, following increasingly frustrated conversations between neighbors as chaos slowly unfolded. It felt like a familiar social format, but every conversation naturally introduced moments from the series. 

I think both campaigns succeeded for the same reason: they didn’t interrupt people’s social feeds. They gave audiences another way to experience the story. 

When marketing feels like entertainment in its own right, people engage because they want to, not because they’re being asked to. 

Lastly, campaigns like these are never the result of one person or one team; they come to life through close collaboration across multiple disciplines. 

‍Spotlight: How do you strategically use social media to really engage people in RTL’s content and platforms?  

‍Tifres: I’m fortunate to work with incredibly talented social strategists and editors who understand the platforms far better than I, but I can share my perspective that comes from a campaign strategy point of view. 

I don’t believe fandom can be manufactured, but I do believe you can create the right conditions for it to grow. We strategically identify the stories, characters, and moments with the greatest fandom potential, but it’s equally important to stay flexible. The real magic happens when you truly understand your audience, listen to what they’re organically responding to, and move with those conversations instead of trying to control them. I also believe in understanding and investing in niche communities. Their reach may be smaller, but their passion and influence are often far greater. Those communities drive recommendations, conversations, and word of mouth in a way that broad-reach campaigns simply can’t.

As a bold entertainer, we don’t shy away from stories and ideas that spark conversation. Many of our titles are deeply rooted in Dutch culture, which gives us the opportunity to tap into recognizable behaviors, humor, and cultural moments that people naturally want to react to. For me, the strongest social campaigns combine that cultural relevance with unexpected creative ideas that become entertaining in their own right. Not just promoting a title, but giving audiences another reason to engage with it. 

 Spotlight: How has your approach to marketing really changed as streaming + social have become ever more pivotal parts of the content and media business?  

‍Tifres: One of the biggest shifts for me personally has been moving from marketing individual titles to helping build the brand of an entire streaming service. In theatrical marketing, you could successfully launch a film as a stand-alone event. Film enthusiasts certainly pay attention to the studio behind a release, but for most audiences it’s the film itself that takes center stage. In streaming, every title shapes how people perceive the platform, so every campaign also contributes to the Videoland brand. 

The other major shift is that I no longer see other streaming services as our biggest competitors. 

Our biggest competitor is time. Every hour someone spends watching YouTube, scrolling social media, gaming or doing something else is an hour they’re not spending with our content. 

That has fundamentally changed how I think about marketing. 

More than ever, I spend time thinking about the consumer’s needs, habits, and headspace rather than simply promoting a title. The challenge isn’t just convincing someone to watch a new series – it’s making streaming feel like a valuable way to spend their time. That requires us to think far less from the inside out and far more from the audience’s perspective

That’s also why social media has become so much more important in my approach. Rather than simply using it to sell a story, I want people to feel like they’re already part of that world before they even press play. If audiences are already emotionally invested by the time a series launches, we’ve created something that’s far more valuable than awareness alone.

Spotlight: This award, and this part of GEMA, is really about women supporting women in entertainment marketing. Why do you think it’s important for women to support other women? How do you do that in your own career? How do you feel you have been supported by other women – particularly bosses, mentors or team leaders?  

‍Tifres: Throughout my career, I’ve almost always worked directly for female leaders, and I’ve always felt incredibly supported by them. I’m genuinely grateful for that, and I hope to keep experiencing that as my career progresses. Unfortunately, as careers progress into more senior leadership roles, female representation often becomes less balanced. 

I was just 19 when I started at Warner Bros. as an intern. Looking back, many of the female leaders I’ve worked with became what I jokingly call my ‘company moms.’ They cheered me on like a daughter almost, challenged me and gave me the confidence to grow. Watching them lead also taught me that empathy, warmth, and decisiveness can go hand in hand. They showed me you don’t have to choose between being approachable and being a strong leader. Also the women I’ve worked with never made me feel like I had to compete for a seat at the table, but they made space for me at it. 

For me, supporting other women isn’t about supporting someone simply because she’s a woman. It’s about recognizing that visibility and opportunities haven’t always come as naturally for everyone, and consciously making sure talented women are seen, heard, and encouraged to step forward.

That’s why I think representation is so important. Seeing women in leadership makes those roles feel more attainable for the next generation, especially in industries where leadership hasn’t always reflected that diversity. 

One thing I’ve felt particularly grateful for is the support I’ve received since becoming a mother. Since our son Sage was born, I’ve never been made to feel that I had to choose between building a meaningful career and being a present parent. I’ve been encouraged to embrace both. That experience showed me that the best leaders don’t just help people grow professionally, but they create an environment where people can thrive as human beings. 

Spotlight: What advice would you offer younger women in the industry who are just beginning to build their careers? 

‍Tifres: Don’t be afraid to lead as yourself. Early in your career, it’s easy to think you have to adopt a more traditionally masculine leadership style to be taken seriously. But some of the strongest female leaders I’ve worked with showed me the opposite. They led with empathy, warmth, and authenticity while making tough decisions, earning respect, and delivering results. Those qualities don’t make you less of a leader—they make you a leader who’s confident enough to lead with her feminine strengths. 

I’d also say never let being a woman become the reason you doubt whether you belong. Surround yourself with people who elevate you, challenge you, and genuinely want to grow alongside you. Learn from people who inspire you—women and men alike—and be curious about the choices they’ve made throughout their careers.

And if there are moments when you do wonder whether your gender is holding you back, don’t carry that question on your own. Talk about it with people you trust. Sometimes you’ll discover there’s another explanation, and sometimes you may realize your instinct was right. Either way, those conversations will help you navigate your career with greater confidence and perspective. 

Finally, don’t be intimidated by people with more experience or more authority. If you’ve earned a seat at the table, believe that you belong there and don’t be afraid to use your voice.