After seeing how dedicated Runaways fans were after the show's premiere in 2017, Hulu wanted to give the Runaways fan base a unique piece of content to announce the premiere date of season 2 and get fans excited for the show's return. The goal was to create something custom that featured the cast and felt in-world to the show, bridging the narrative between seasons 1 and 2 to let fans know where their favorite Runaways were after they ran away from home at the end of season 1. Hulu also wanted to evangelize the rabid Runaways fanbase and inspire them to share the message with their friends and mutuals.
Imagine your friend was on the run from their parents (who are, of course, evil, as all parents are). Wouldn't you want to know they were okay, wherever they were? To let fans know the Runaways were safe while on the run in the streets of Los Angeles and were coming back soon for something big, we shot a custom stunt video piece on an iPhone X written and designed to look like a low-fi video message sent from a phone, shot from an undisclosed location. The Runaways, speaking direct-to-camera in a script written by showrunners Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, inform us that they're safe and can't say where they are—but that they need our help sharing an important message, but only to those we can trust.
To create buzz and get our core audience re-engaged and excited for the new season, it was sent only to super fans and fan sites via Twitter direct messages, and was not officially posted anywhere.
The 50 super fans who received the stunt video instantly knew what to do- they immediately re-posted the stunt video publicly and tagged the official Runaways twitter account in their tweets to friends sharing the release date. A fan upload of the video on YouTube has earned 245K organic views to date, and several fan re-posts on Twitter earned in the hundreds or thousands of retweets. In the 24 hours following the social video stunt and subsequent press release, more than half of the organic conversation was attributed to the custom video alone, after it was sent to only 50 super fans.
The stunt-y nature of the video and its release received widespread praise from fans, who said it was "creative" and that they felt "lucky" to receive this "golden ticket." The messaging style used in the direct message also inspired fan-made memes in a similar format.
