Hunter Ellenbarger didn’t teach Logan Lerman how to talk like an internet girlie—but when Lerman uttered the words, “Girlie, that’s a hard no. Mama, no,” during a video shoot to promote the movie Oh, Hi!, Ellenbarger knew he had social marketing gold on his hands.
Ellenbarger is the founder of Star Quality, the design practice and consultancy behind some of the social assets in the online campaign for the Sony Pictures Classics film, a romantic comedy starring Lerman alongside Molly Gordon that premiered in late July. Working alongside Sony’s in-house marketing team, Ellenbarger and his team handled creator partnerships and creative shoots, producing five longform videos for Sony’s YouTube as well as various short-form cuts and paid social ads.
While filming one of these longer interview-based videos, Lerman began speaking in internet, which Ellenbarger identified as a perfect moment to cut into an ad to prompt viewers to buy tickets to the film. That kind of tongue-in-cheek humor, which often hits best with online audiences, brought in more than 350,000 views on a single organic X post; Ellenbarger said the video ended up being one of the film campaign’s better performing pieces of content. The video is emblematic of Ellenbarger’s approach to marketing, which he describes as balancing the highbrow with the lowbrow.
“[My approach] puts the talent, who are these Hollywood stars that people have grown up with, are seeing on acclaimed TV shows, and it makes them more peer to peer, which is how we consume TikTok creators,” Ellenbarger said.
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Star Quality began working with Sony Pictures Classics during its campaign for the black comedy Wicked Little Letters in 2023, where Ellenbarger worked on exploring new creative formats for paid ads outside of trailers and teasers. When Oh, Hi! came around two years later, he was called on once again to create bespoke ads for social designed to stand out from the crowd of film marketing online.
“We always filter our ideation process through, ‘What do we want people to understand about this movie?’” Ellenbarger told Marketing Brew. “I always have this philosophy of, think like a fan.”
Being a fan of Oh, Hi! meant focusing less on typical promotional material, like the actors’ preparation process, and more on interpretations of the film’s big themes, like creating an anonymous hotline for those with dating advice questions, which actors answered on screen. Ellenbarger finds inspiration from internet series that have already seen success, including Chicken Shop Date and Vanity Fair’s Lie Detector Test, both of which follow easily identifiable formats.
Leading creative ad shoots aimed at online success requires a level of buy-in from the talent, Ellenbarger said, and he said that the level of enthusiasm to expect from actors or musicians varies across projects. But it’s always a positive when A-list talent is willing to participate in his ideas.
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“Everyone’s a little bit different. It depends on how they want their own personal brands to seem,” he said. “But I think the [artists] that I’ve noticed be more successful as far as returns at the box office or album sales…are the ones that are a little bit more down to play the game.”
For Oh, Hi!, Ellenbarger found the cast to be particularly game for his “more playful, silly ideas,” and the film went on to score a top 10 box office debut weekend at $1.15 million, which he said felt like a win considering that the limited release went up against major franchises like Smurfs and Jurassic World: Rebirth.
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Beyond social videos, Star Quality was responsible for what Ellenbarger calls “creator matchmaking,” which involves finding and commissioning influencer partnerships for sponsored content.
Oh, Hi! partnered with comedian Hannah Esky and the popular Instagram account @afffirmations. Esky, known for what Ellenbarger described as “unhinged tarot readings,” made a video in her signature style touching on plot points from the film without giving anything away; @afffirmations also created a post mirroring its general post format featuring stills from the movie and red carpet images of Gordon and Lerman.
“[It’s] less like mechanical influencer marketing and more like brand influencer marketing,” Ellenbarger said of his partnership process.
To find the right creator partners, Ellenbarger said there’s no secret sauce or perfect tool. Instead, he said it comes down to “having really high screen time” and “rabbit hole-ing a lot.” As creator partnerships continue to be a major segment of Star Quality’s work, he’s looking to hire people who understand the internet the way he does—the kind of person who maybe used to run a Tumblr fan blog or can help craft the next viral TikTok sound.
“That’s the type of internet user that is going to find the right people that will actually move the needle,” Ellenbarger said.