After decades of being swept under the rug, the gender pay gap is finally getting the attention it deserves. And leading up to the Women’s World Cup, it was the biggest storyline surrounding the US National Team. So after Hulu signed pretty much the whole team and asked us to create an “authentic” influencer campaign promoting Hulu + Live TV, we knew exactly what we needed to do.

Hulu Sellouts is an influencer campaign you can’t call bullshit on. Long story short, we had the USWNT 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 cracked the code.

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

Given the cultural context of the USWNT’s fight for pay equality, we knew we had to partner with them in this campaign.

Hulu Sellouts lived primarily on the social feeds of our sponsored athletes. We kicked the campaign off by sending the players briefcases full of cash, which they then turned into short videos that their fans loved. Then, our TV spot showed how they were selling out: with a sponsored goal celebration called “The Hulu Has Live Sports.”

Once the World Cup began, each of the players shared photos of them holding the world’s largest novelty check. Then, to bring an interactive aspect to the campaign, we had the players seed the Hulu Has Live Sports Challenge, where fans could help fight the gender pay gap by sharing videos of themselves saying “Hulu Has Live Sports” while juggling a soccer ball.

After the USWNT won the World Cup, the players sold out one final time, sharing selfie videos where they yelled, “Hulu Has Live Sports!” from their victory parade.

Posts from our athletes reached over 81 million fans, generating over 1.8 million organic engagements and almost 3.3 million dollars in earned media for Hulu.

To date, Megan Rapinoe’s Hulu Sellouts trick-shot video after winning the World Cup is the most viewed video on her Instagram, with almost 3 million views. That post alone delivered half a million dollars in media value for Hulu—the highest performing asset of the entire campaign.