The archive · Marketing & Growth · Marketing decision · 2023–2024
Hulu turns Only Murders S3's launch into a real crime scene — Webby People's Voice
Escape rooms, a Broadway-theater crime scene and an Emmy-winning aftershow let fans solve the murder themselves — 14.5B impressions, 1M new followers.
Hulu Originals · Campfire
What it had to solve
Season 3 of Only Murders in the Building takes the trio to Broadway, with Meryl Streep and Paul Rudd joining the cast. Hulu Originals wanted an 'everywhere you look' 360-degree campaign as theatrical as the season — a bigger mystery, more suspects, more twists.
How it works
For season 3 of Only Murders in the Building, Hulu moved the mystery to Broadway: the trio investigates a murder inside a theater, with Meryl Streep and Paul Rudd joining the cast. Hulu Originals set out to build an 'everywhere you look' 360-degree campaign whose scale matched the theatrical season — a bigger mystery, more suspects, more twists, in every corner of the internet and the city.
The campaign treated fans as co-investigators. Branded escape rooms in New York and Los Angeles were built on sets styled like rooms in the Arconia, complete with hidden bookcase doorways and secret passages. 'Backstage at the Goosebury' turned the United Palace Theater in New York — where the season was actually filmed — into a three-day interactive crime scene where fans used black-light flashlights to find hidden clues on real props, costumes and scenery.
Around the experiences, the social team ran a star-studded content stream including Meryl Streep's casting reveal, and the Emmy-winning aftershow 'One Killer Question' kept the mystery going between episodes. Guests at the theater experience got touch-ups from Selena Gomez's Rare Beauty makeup artists before stepping on stage and pinning their whodunnit vote on Mabel's Murder Board.
The results exceeded the brief: Hulu Originals gained one million social followers and earned more than 14.5 billion media impressions, with over 11 billion from the premiere and finale activations alone and 4,350 guests at the Goosebury experience — which Mashable called 'the hottest ticket in town.' The full effort won the 2025 Webby People's Voice for Integrated Campaign, and the experience won the 2024 Webby People's Voice for Best Event Activation.
Why it lands
- The campaign let audiences perform the show's premise — solving a murder — instead of passively watching trailers.
- Real production assets, including the actual theater, props and costumes, made the promotion indistinguishable from the fiction.
- Layered channels — escape rooms, live event, social, aftershow — each contributed a clue rather than repeating one message.
- A free, ticketed experience plus celebrity casting turned a promo into must-get press and organic word of mouth.
What it did
Hulu Originals gained one million social followers and more than 14.5 billion media impressions; the premiere and finale activations alone drew over 11 billion, with 4,350 guests at the Goosebury experience. The campaign won the 2025 Webby People's Voice for Integrated Campaign, and the experience won the 2024 Webby People's Voice for Best Event Activation.
What you can take
When the product is a mystery, don't advertise it — let the audience perform it: promotion becomes participation, and fans become the campaign's cast.
Since then
The 360 campaign closed with the season's finale activations and the whodunnit vote. Recognition followed in 2024 and 2025: the Webby People's Voice for Best Event Activation for the Goosebury experience and for Integrated Campaign for the full effort, plus EX and GEMA awards for the activation. It became a reference point for entertainment marketing that turns a show's genre into the campaign itself, and the escape-room-plus-live-event format was adopted across later seasons' promotions.
Sources
- Only Murders in the Building Season 3 360 Campaign | People's Voice Winner | 2025
- Only Murders in the Building Season 3 360 Campaign
- Hulu / Backstage at the Goosebury
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