The Face Behind Hulu Summer Film

School -Film Studies graduate from UC Berkeley with an interest in writing, design, and all things film. -Coming into Hulu, I had three goals: 1) Take ownership over a long-term project. 2) Collaborate cross-functionally with different teams at Hulu to better understand their roles. 3) Improve my design and writing abilities

Business Goals 1)  DRIVE AWARENESS TO HULU MOVIE

LIBRARY. There is an increasing array of high quality features in the Hulu Movie library. Yet viewers may be unaware of the existence of these titles or still assume that Hulu has a limited selection of quality features.

2)  Drive Awareness to the

Criterion Collection. the Criterion Collection is a textbook standard for Film Students. And most are unaware it’s on hulu.

Audience

Mainstream Film fans + aspiring filmmakers  The goal was to provide users with a broad overview of filmmaking techniques and not overwhelm them with detail. Benefits to audience: No tests or quizzes, class from the comfort of your couch, And FREE!

Project Components 1)  Spotlight Page - Each week, page

was updated with a new playlist of films related to a filmmaking technique.

v  Story Structure & Screenwriting (7.18)

v  Cinematography v  Color Theory and Lighting v  Soundtrack, Score, and Sound

Design v  Costumes and Set Design v  Animation v  Post-Production (8.29)

2)  Weekly MH – ran Friday>>Sunday, 7 times in total.   v  P1/2/3 for movies masthead and P4

and above for homepage. 3)  Blog – 2 blog posts a week.

v  1 post introducing the technique and featured films

v  1 post providing in-depth focus on individual film.  

Teams Involved Content recommended films, secured stunts, fostered Criterion Collection partnership, and made films Classic avail. Creative Services designed cover art + weekly masthead art Editorial recruited writers and editorial partners for blog posts. Marketing produced the email newsletter.

Filmmaking is all about appreciating the talents of the people you surround yourself with and knowing you could never have made any of these films by yourself.

- Steven Spielberg  

Spotlight

C O N T E N T

At the start of the promotion, I coordinated with the film content team to select films for our weekly playlists. Our goal was to feature a blend of well-known hits and smaller critical darlings to both celebrate the technical achievements of mainstream films and introduce audiences to lesser-known classics.

C O N T E N T Another goal was to feature both Classic and Plus features to drive views and subscriptions. With the help of the Content team, we were able to stunt Ghostbusters as a Classic avail during the opening week of Film School.

We were also able to partner with the Criterion Collection to make their films Classic avail.

C R E A T I V E

Each week, I’d attain art from editorial, the content partner, or in some cases the video file itself. I would then pass the assets to Kevin to create the masthead.

C R E A T I V E

A lot of the films that we were planning to feature on the mastheads were cult classics. Through the saturated colorings and grain of the masthead design, we sought to foster a mood of nostalgia towards these films.

C R E A T I V E

The grain on the images also emphasized the behind-the-scenes quality of the promotion and the promotion’s focus not only on the films, but also on the stories behind their creation.

E D I T O R I A L The Blog: •  At the start of film school, we recruited a

couple of talented and enthusiastic Hulugans to write blurbs about each of the featured films.

•  The blurbs provided overviews of the

featured films as well as explorations of how each film exemplified the theme.

•  Each week, we supplemented the blurb

with a different piece of multimedia. Some weeks we would feature a clip from the film. Other weeks we’d incorporate an animated gif or still.

•  The blog provided me with the

opportunity to hone my skills in design and writing. The next slide showcases a sampling of that work (contains gifs that might not be viewable in pdf).

E D I T O R I A L

E D I T O R I A L Partnerships: Throughout the project, we were able to secure four different editorial partnerships with Indiewire, Criterion Collection, No Film School, and Rookie respectively.

Value of Partnerships: •  Built positive connection of Hulu brand

with other brands respected on the brand love scale

  •  Made Film School content visible to

target audience. •  Provided much needed social support

for project.

Agreement: As part of the partnerships, we were able to get writers from each of the publications to pick a film from the Hulu Movie library and write a guest post about how the technique of the week functions in that film.

M A R K e T I N G

Email Newsletter

M A R K e T I N G •  Released to 3.7 MM

movie-watching subscribers.

•  Open rates were slightly

below average (12.4%) but engagement was high—click through rate (% click over delivered) and click to open rate (% click over opens) were extremely high. CTR was at 0.7% and CTOR was at 6%. Consumption was comparable to The Great Beauty campaign.

O R g a n I c S O C I A L

Twitter Engagement – Each week, I sent out tweets from my personal Twitter account promoting the blog posts to cast and crew members involved in the various featured films. Reddit Engagement - I also posted blog articles using my personal Reddit account to sub-Reddits that I felt would be relevant for the content. Cold Email – Finally, I took to Outlook to email various film news sources to let them know about the week’s content.

METRIC NUGGETS

METRIC NUGGETS

77,405 non-unique page views

on hulu.com/film-school from 7/18 until 8/28.

63,390

uniques page views on hulu.com/film-school from 7/18 until 8/28.

Users Not only Visited the page, but also Came Back. They wanted to learn more!

Key Learning #1

(# of page views in the first 40 days of campaign) HULU SUMMER FILM SCHOOL – 63,390 unique/77,405 non-unique Summer TV - 67,118 uniques/77,660 non-uniques Fall TV - 162,172 non-uniques/129,153 uniques

Comparing Hulu Summer Film School to other Spotlight pages

Considering the masthead placement and content, The performance of the Summer Film School Spotlight Page was comparable to other spotlight campaigns. The number of non-uniques was comparable to SUMMER tv!

METRIC NUGGETS

Since its promotion on 8/15,

Earth Girls are Easy has received 17,761 views, making it the highest-viewed Summer Film School feature.

1)  Feature in Email Newsletter A.  “Earth Girls Are Easy” had the highest consumption for

both Plus and Classic lineups 2)  Rookie’s article from Marie Lodi

A.  Republished on HuffPo Ent- 300 LIKES, 29 FB SHARES, and TWEET FROM Candy and EGAE screenwriter, Julie Brown

B.  Rookie publicized Marie’s article on their Tumblr page. Received 296 notes.

3) First time featured on MH.

A buried treasure made relevant again!

Key Contributors

1) Valley Girls and Alien Hunks: The Cool Costumes of EartH girls Are easy (ROOKIE MAGAZINE) Blog - 141 likes/8 tweets HuffPo – 300 likes/29 shares Tumblr – 296 notes 2) Lighting Persona (CRITERION COLLECTION) Blog – 1,400 likes/30 tweets Criterion FB page – 952 likes/142 shares 3) Learn Film Techniques with Ghostbusters (Indiewire) Blog - 6 positive comments on blog. 19 re-tweets /22 favorites 4) Hulu’s Summer Film School is Now In Session (No Film School) 748 likes/69 re-tweets/7 comments

Comparing Editorial Partnerships Across Hulu Summer Film SChool

By aligning with these highly-regarded editorial brands, Hulu is able to increase its visibility and brand love.

Key Learning #2

Editorial partnerships can influence Video views and increase brand love.

METRIC NUGGETS

With little marketing support, Hulu Summer Film School received 785 spotlight page likes, 152 reddit upvotes, 30 blog comments, and 4 filmmaker tweets.

Spotlight Engagement

785 likes, 12 comments and none are complaining about: -Ads -Our (lack of) content -insert complaint here

Blog Engagement

30 comments  

This the total number of comments received on all blog posts throughout the promotion. My goal was to create an active dialogue between Hulu and the users to foster a positive user experience by personally responding to blog comments.

Case Study: New site content was released each Friday morning around 11 am. This blog reader was ready to receive it!

Twitter ENGAGEMENT Over 200 Twitter mentions.

David Gelb, director of Jiro Dreams of Sushi

Tomm Moore, director of The Secret of Kells

Colin Wilkes, costume designer for Computer Chess

Filmmaker ENGAGEMENT

Case Studies:

99: This was the percentage of comments that were positive about Hulu Film School across all social networks. This sampling of comments is a testament to the campaign’s ability to start a favorable conversation amongst viewers.

Key Learning #3

Grassroots Marketing is time-consuming, but Can foster Brand Love.

Challenges of hulu summer film school

1)  Working with the Hulu Timelines – Initially I wanted to make changes to the spotlight page’s site design as well as work with the Ad Promotions team to secure sponsorship for the page. Due to the timelines of the Site team and the lack of sponsorship options on the page, I was unable to move forward with these ideas.

2)  No Social Support – I was unable to receive mentions from any Hulu Social channels. This forced the undertaking of grassroots methods to promote the project.

3) Maintaining Editorial Partnerships – The lack of social and financial support made it difficult to offer a value proposition to potential editorial partners.  

Achievements of Hulu Summer Film SChool

1)  It starts with the user By creating a multi-faceted user experience through curated playlists, editorial partnerships, and staff-written blog posts, Hulu Summer Film School promotes Hulu as smart, fun, and helpful. Hulu Summer Film School wants to help users do more than just watch, but actually learn. Furthermore, through regular response to feedback, Hulu Summer Film School fosters an ACTIVE user experience where users feel that they are being heard.

2)  IT Redefines TV- It recreates the bonus feature experience on DVDs and brings it to our users.

3)  It makes us a must-have brand - Users felt like

they needed Hulu Summer Film School and were mad when they couldn’t have it. No Film School readers actually had a discussion on how to use a vpn to access film school content outside of the United States.

 

Credits J �

Naveen, Chris, and Jonathan

Katz

Editorial Team

Sheila!

Film Content

Team Marketing Team

Creative Services

Team