Hulu recognized that a major customer pain point and barrier to entry are the commercials. So this year, Hulu listened and created a solution for its subscribers—Hulu came out with a new, commercial-free option. And of course to announce a commercial-free option on Hulu, we made a series of commercials. Ones that fully embraced the irony of commercials advertising a no-commercials option.

In addition to running on the Hulu platform as streaming ads, Hulu’s “Commercial-Free Commercials” ran on TV, specifically late night programming such as Late Night with Seth Meyers and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. They also ran on NFL Network and National Cable. Primetime TV was the most prominent place to reach TV lovers and get our message across. Digitally, these were also released on YouTube as pre-roll. Accompanying messaging ran on Buzzfeed (skin), Federated Media, Boingo and Pandora to name a few, standard banners ran as well. There was also a social push on Facebook and Instagram. The campaign ran for approximately five weeks.

The NOAH spots, Fireside, Jingle and Director, were the most impactful at driving lower funnel improvements in free trial and subscription intent

People exposed to the ad:

53.6% Brand Favorability (12.4% more than control)

32.9% Free Trail Intent (9.9% more than control)

11.3% Subscription Intent (4.1% more than control)

Hulu’s new brand strategy is “With Hulu, TV Loves You Back,” which is centered around cultivating a two-way relationship between brand and fan. The No Commercials plan campaign was the first opportunity for Hulu to communicate its new brand strategy. By putting the viewer at the center of everything Hulu does, we developed a series of short-form videos that were used on Hulu.com and would play as ads while users were streaming content. This drove a direct response in that users could switch to the No Commercials plan seamlessly on platform.

Our research gave us a new insight – we learned that today people expect a different relationship with TV – consumers now want a two-way relationship. The key insight was that reciprocity was a critical piece of this new relationship with TV. “I want the television to care about me and my experience as much as I care about it, “ one respondent in research told us. We realized that in this new era of TV, there had to be more than just our love for TV in this relationship. Today, we want TV to love us back—and that’s the territory that Hulu could own.

This campaign was the start of a larger campaign to bring to life this idea of a two-way relationship by taking actions that demonstrate to viewers that today, with Hulu, TV loves you back and listens by offering the the No Commercials plan.

This campaign’s objective was to drive awareness of Hulu’s new commercial-free option. The target audience included current subscribers (particularly those who have expressed interest in commercial-free services), previous subscribers, and prospective subscribers at large. We leveraged ad space on Hulu.com to drive action to switch to the No Commercials plan.