Hulu had a problem: they had Live TV, but nobody knew about it. So they tasked us with creating an influencer campaign to spread the word, but wanted it to feel “real” and “authentic.”

Knowing that influencer campaigns are typically anything but, we knew the only solution was 100% complete honesty.

Hulu Sellouts is an influencer campaign you can’t call bullshit on. Long story short, we had three NFL stars tell the world that Hulu paid them a ton of money to say “Hulu has live sports.”

Here’s the thing about influencer marketing: it’s just a bunch of people trying to hide the fact they’re getting paid to sell stuff. It’s faker than fake, and while every influencer does it, every follower sees right through it, and no brand had yet to figure out a solution.

So we thought: why not just be honest? Why not just have our NFL influencers own the fact they’re getting paid a lot of money to say “Hulu has live sports”?

Hulu Sellouts lived primarily on social. We created unique stories for each athlete that messed with culture by hijacking their existing narrative. They followed this general cadence: a disruptive teaser post, the Hulu Sellout reveal, a big moment broadcast launch, and then more social content for the athletes to continue the conversation.

For example, Todd Gurley has always been a self-described “aspiring cat dude.” So we made his feline dreams come true by getting him a cat named Mr. Hulu Has Live Sports. Then, we turned his cat into an Instagram catfluencer with almost 20,000 followers.

For Baker Mayfield, we knew that every star quarterback has a signature audible. So we paid Baker to make his “Hulu Has Live Sports!”

Finally, Saquon Barkley missed out on being the cover athlete of Madden ’20. So we made him the cover athlete of Hulu Has Live Sports ’20: The Video Game.

Overall, the campaign delivered almost one billion impressions across all media channels. Our athlete influencer posts alone generated nearly one million organic engagements. In addition, among sports fans who don’t subscribe to Hulu, those who saw the campaign were 30% more likely to agree that Hulu is “a service that allows them to watch live sports,” and 23% more likely to agree that Hulu is “a service that understands sports fans,” results that were over 4x their historic benchmarks.