How Hulu inspired Stephen King fans leading up to 11.22.63

Found Remote interviewed Lindsey Pearl who oversees social media for Hulu about the strategy behind their campaigns for 11.22.63.

Found Remote: How did you use Instagram for the launch of 11.22.63? What partners did you work with?

Lindsey Pearl: Our goal was to ingratiate Hulu’s version of 11.22.63 to King superfans ahead of premiere so that they’d evangelize on the show’s behalf.

Known for cross-referencing his own body of work in his novels, Stephen King baked many Easter eggs into 11.22.63 — references only a superfan would recognize.

When adapting 11.22.63 to serialized TV, Executive Producer and showrunner Bridget Carpenter (and King superfan herself) baked the same unique attention to detail into her scripts and the production design.

Ahead of premiere, we used @112263onHulu on Instagram to roll out 12 individual images that combined to complete a poster image of Dealey Plaza, the infamous location of JFK’s assassination, and a central plot location in the show. In each poster image are multiple veiled references to King’s body of work. The references mapped to references found in the show – and were vetted by Bridget Carpenter.

We introduced superfans and influencers to the campaign by mailing them "yellow cards" — a reference to the mysterious “Yellow Card Man” — inviting them to visit us on Instagram, and telling them “You shouldn’t be here,” a cryptic phrase that persists in the show and is recognizable to the book fans.

As a bonus egg, screenshotting the image and applying a filter on Instagram revealed a word that was also a wink and a nod to the novel. Adding that word to hulu.tv/___ redirected the user to Hulu’s YouTube channel for additional BTS video that correlated to the word.

Limited edition, numbered and signed prints of the complete poster were mailed to select superfans throughout the course of the season and beyond, rewarding our most active participants, bringing the digital reward to the physical world.

FR: Why did you pick that platform?

LP: As far as visual storytelling goes, Instagram is still one of the most impactful platforms to engage on — its immediacy and intimacy let us run wild. We were collecting a small but impassioned fan base there, and wanted to be able to reward them with something fun, challenging, and word-of-mouth worthy.

We were also looking to Instagram because of its frictionless connection to Facebook, where reach is less of a challenge.

FR: Any other social campaigns?

LP: Another one of our favorite elements from the 11.22.63 social campaigns was a video series we called “An Insider’s Guide to 11.22.63.” It broke down the Easter eggs, real history, and King trivia found in each episode in a way that was fun to watch. These were rolled out at the end of the season once all the episodes were available on Hulu (spoilers abound!) as a way to inspire re-watching and binge.

FR: What were the results?

LP: While the reach of the Instagram campaign was relatively small at the time, we successfully impressed the early hand-raisers. We earned quality (over quantity) love.

A few fansites and niche media outlets covered the activation as it was happening, and Stephen King got behind it with throws from his Facebook page.

We’ve organically earned over 190,000 fans on Facebook since the launch of the show, which for us and our growing Hulu Originals brand, also counts as a success.

FR: What did you learn about the fans of the show? What were their passions?

LP: We learned that their love for Stephen King’s storytelling knows no bounds.

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