Only Murders in the Building: Incorporating a Touch of Mystery into Your Marketing

Do you think of your customers as simple consumers of your brand? If so, you’re missing out on the opportunity to turn them into diehard brand ambassadors. 

The key to inspiring impassioned brand loyalty is simple: engage your customers more deeply. Get them talking about your brand. Get them asking questions. And what better way to get your customers engaged than to instill a little mystery in your content?

In this episode, we’re looking at the award-winning hit series Only Murders in the Building for lessons on incorporating some mystery into your marketing. We’ll show you how to use interactive marketing, engage your audience’s critical thinking skills, and get people talking about your brand.

About Only Murders in the Building

Only Murders in the Building is a mystery-comedy series released in 2021. Created by Steve Martin and John Hoffman, the show is about three residents who live in a luxury apartment building in New York City. The trio becomes unlikely friends after they team up to solve the mystery around the death of one of their neighbors – and start a podcast to document it. The award-winning series stars Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez. Only Murders in the Building is the most watched comedy premiere on Hulu to date, ranked in Nielsen’s top 10 for weeks following its release, and the first season is rated 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. If you're looking to add a little mystery in your marketing, there's no better example to follow.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From Only Murders in the Building: 

• Create an interactive experience for customers. Offer them access points across different platforms or mediums to engage with your brand. Only Murders in the Building gives viewers several opportunities to become detectives themselves. The Emmy award-winning series hid clues relating back to the series across multiple platforms — including at an in-person pop-up event. To promote the show, Hulu also created “ambient rooms,” or video scenescapes of each character’s apartment where viewers could spend time looking for clues to the murder mystery. Clues were hidden in the music, ambient noise, fleeting images, or were even items within the room! It’s this level of audience engagement, suspense, and storytelling that led to the show’s incredible success. 
• Don’t reinvent the wheel…entirely. Martin Short and Steve Martin are a well-known comedy duo and have an amazing on-screen chemistry. Only Murders in the Building took their existing relationship and created something entirely new with it. The addition of pop icon Selena Gomez to the cast as the show’s final detective adds to the promise that viewers will be watching something new. If you’ve created ads, or marketing campaigns that have been successful in the past, take elements of what’s worked well and spin them to create something new. No need to completely reinvent what has already resonated with your audience! 
• Intrigue your audience with mystery. Engage your audience’s critical thinking skills by leaving room to the imagination. Only Murders in the Building builds layers of intrigue with the mysterious death of Tim Kono. But as the show goes on, the mysteries only deepen, and the series slowly reveals that each of the three main characters have dark secrets of their own. In your B2B marketing, create storylines that are playful, suspenseful, and leave some room for your audience to fill in the gaps themselves. Everyone loves a good challenge and piecing together clues to get to the bigger picture.

Key Quotes

*”Fans are really into mysteries and theories. They like little surprises that involve them and make people feel like they can be a part of the show, a part of solving these mysteries.” - Anagha Das

*”Having the show turn into like a bit of a puzzle just creates for a more activating, interactive experience where you're not just sitting there passively consuming content. You actually have to turn your brain on and activate, becoming essentially a part of the show. Your own detective.” - Dane Eckerle

*”Every company is presenting some kind of solution that's solving a problem. I wonder if there's some opportunity to make some content around solving that problem, in making that into some kind of mystery.” - Colin Stamps

*”One huge benefit and advantage of utilizing mystery is just getting people to discuss things and have a conversation, to talk about what they're seeing or what they're feeling.” - Dane Eckerle

Time Stamps

[1:23] Tell me more about Only Murders in the Building

[5:26] Why should you use mystery in your marketing?

[8:05] How do you get deeper audience engagement?

[11:46] How do you apply mystery to your marketing campaign?

[17:32] What other companies have used mystery in their marketing?

[21:04] What's the key to a great mystery? 

[23:01] How can comedy and mystery be used together for greater impact?

Links

Watch Only Murders in the Building

See how Dove used a sense of mystery in their Real Beauty campaign

About Remarkable!

Remarkable! is created by the team at Caspian Studios, the premier B2B Podcast-as-a-Service company. Caspian creates both non-fiction and fiction series for B2B companies. If you want a fiction series check out our new offering - The Business Thriller - Hollywood style storytelling for B2B. Learn more at CaspianStudios.com. 

In today’s episode, you heard from Ian Faison (CEO of Caspian Studios), Dane Eckerle (Head of Development), Colin Stamps (Podcast Launch Manager), Anagha Das (B2B Content Marketing Manager), and Meredith O’Neil (Senior Producer). Remarkable was produced this week by Meredith O’Neil, mixed by Scott Goodrich, and our theme song is “Solomon” by FALAK. 

Create something remarkable. Rise above the noise.