Anything Goes shows that reaching global audiences increasingly means engaging viewers beyond the television screen. At MIPCOM 2026‘s MIP Innovation Lab’s “Beyond the Platform: Building Global Audiences in a Fragmented World” session, Rodrigo Nascimento, Head of International Business Hub EMEA at Globo, shared how the company used social media and character-driven storytelling to expand engagement around its telenovela Anything Goes.
Joining BBC Studios SVP Digital Jasmine Dawson, Nascimento discussed the importance of understanding audiences across platforms and creating experiences that extend the life of a story beyond its original format.
Anything Goes: A classic story that connects generations
Nascimento highlighted the potential of remakes to attract both established fans and younger audiences. Anything Goes, Globo’s contemporary version of the iconic Brazilian telenovela originally aired in 1988, brought a familiar story to viewers who remembered the original while sparking curiosity among Gen Z audiences.
The story’s enduring appeal, including the mystery surrounding one of Brazilian television’s most notorious villains, Odete Roitman, helped create a connection between generations. By updating the characters and narrative for contemporary audiences, Globo was able to bring different age groups together around the same story.
For Nascimento, the success of the approach demonstrated that a remake can do more than revisit a familiar title: it can introduce a classic to a new generation while giving longtime fans a fresh reason to engage.
Turning a fictional character into a digital presence
One of the most notable elements of the strategy involved a character who is an influencer within the telenovela itself. Globo created a dedicated Instagram account for the character, extending her fictional identity into social media and allowing the team to interact with the show’s audience beyond the episodes.
Rather than treating the account simply as a promotional channel, the initiative was designed to create an ongoing relationship with viewers. The character’s presence on social media offered another way to follow the story and engage with its world.
Globo also expanded the reach of Anything Goes by adding Spanish and English subtitles. According to Nascimento, the initiative generated more than 200 million views, illustrating the potential of social media to take a local television storyline to a much wider audience.
The example showed how a character can become a bridge between a television narrative and a broader digital experience, encouraging viewers to participate in the story beyond the time they spend watching the show.
Understanding audiences across platforms
Nascimento emphasized that media companies need to move beyond defining their audience solely in terms of television viewers. Audiences exist across multiple platforms, each with its own habits, expectations and ways of interacting with content.
The challenge, he explained, is to understand what audiences want, identify how best to respond to those demands and develop a 360-degree strategy that follows them across platforms.
The Anything Goes example illustrates how established intellectual property can be reimagined for a fragmented media landscape. By combining a recognizable story with updated characters, dedicated social media activity and multilingual content, Globo created additional opportunities for audiences to discover and engage with the telenovela.
The broader message from the session was clear: building global audiences is not only about distributing content to more territories. It is also about creating meaningful connections with viewers wherever they choose to engage with a story.
