The Showrunner Model: Why Brands Should Think Like TV Shows

Image source: Glenn Carstens-Peters via Unsplash​

Have you ever binged a TV show, suddenly it’s 2 am, you’re emotionally exhausted, and you’ve even dm’d your group chat a conspiracy theory about the ending? Now ask yourself this - when was the last time you did the same for a brand campaign?

We live in a world where audiences consume entire seasons in one sitting, fall in love with characters, obsess over plot twists, and buy the merch to prove it. TV shows have a tendency to connect us. Season after season, the drama and storylines become embedded in our lives. They become ice-breakers and conversation starters, even with strangers at a party you didn’t want to go to in the first place. Oftentimes, TV shows draw us into fictional worlds that somehow feel deeply personal. If you’re like me, after the last season of White Lotus, you couldn’t stop talking about it. Right now, it’s Seth Rogen’s 'The Studio.' A few years ago, it was 'The Boys.' Before that, 'Game of Thrones' and so on. These stories resonate so strongly that we often go back to old seasons of 'The Office' or 'Entourage' just to reconnect with the feeling we had the first time around. So don’t be shocked when the next thing you binge isn’t a Netflix show, but a brand social campaign you can’t stop thinking about.

To explore that idea, let me go back to 2013, when the Oreo newsroom at 360i birthed the now famous tweet 'You can still dunk in the dark.' That single tweet set off a cultural chain reaction and arguably birthed the 'Newsroom Model' of brand marketing. The framework was simple: huddle in real time, monitor live events and trends, produce content instantly, and react faster than anyone else. For a while, it worked. But lately we are starting to realize something critical - lightning like that is hard to replicate. The Newsroom model is reactive. It’s unpredictable. And it puts your brand at the mercy of the news cycle. Which raises the bigger question: wouldn’t it be more powerful to create the cultural moment, rather than chase it?

That’s exactly what the 'Showrunner Model' proposes - an evolved approach to social storytelling that moves away from trend-chasing and into world-building. Rather than reacting to culture or interrupting feeds with ads, brands should be asking themselves: What is the world we want to build today so that it trends tomorrow?

In television, the showrunner sets the vision. They oversee the characters, the arcs, the universe. They don’t chase moments - they build toward them. With this model, the same approach can apply to brand storytelling. Instead of thinking in campaigns, agencies and in-house studios should be creating cultural IP. Instead of one-off posts, they should be developing story arcs. Instead of sporadic influencer activations, they should collaborate with creators whose values and vision align with the brand’s long-term narrative.

This shift is already in motion. We saw it with Reesa Teesaand her divorce TikTok saga 'Who the F*ck Did I Marry?.' We saw it in Web3 with10KTF, where a fictional tailor named Wagmi-San had to battle villains to keep his NFT-powered shop alive by engaging the community token holders and releasing the video series in clips via X (when it was still Twitter) whenever the community of token holders tuned in. But at a brand level, no example is more accurate than Duolingo’s now-legendary 'Death of Duo' campaign made by their in-house team. A multi-platform, self-referential stunt that turned a green owl into a cinematic antihero with a cult following.

This is the Showrunner Model in action. Rather than interrupting social feeds, brands become the entertainment. They reward loyal fans and bring new ones along for the ride.

So what does this model actually look like? Think of it this way:

Brand = Network

Agency = Studio

Creators = Writers / Directors

Campaign = Season

Trends = Episode arcs

Social Channels = Scenes / Locations

Result = Long-term Ratings (i.e., engagement, loyalty, cultural relevance)

A great tool to help map out these long-form narratives is Dan Harmon’s Story Circle. It’s a simplified version of the Hero’s Journey that would allow marketers to plan character introductions, creator collaborations, trend integrations, and channel strategies over time.

If we place Duolingo’s campaign in the story-clock format it would look something like this: At the top of the story circle (12 o’clock), they introduced us to Duo, the brand’s owl mascot who gets 'sick' when users skip their lessons. Then they reinforced key KPIs: get people to complete their lessons and get Dua Lipa to acknowledge the brand. At 3 o’clock—the transition from order to chaos - they announced Duo’s death. This sudden twist created a wave of frenzied reactions across Reddit, Instagram, and TikTok. Creators joined in, staging elaborate funeral tributes in real time. By 6 o’clock, the midpoint of the story, Duolingo revealed that Duo was killed by a Cybertruck - a perfect use of a trending topic within the storyline. Then came the eulogy, delivered by the CEO on YouTube, where he cleverly shared all the app’s RTBs in a heartfelt yet satirical tone. Finally, at the 9 o’clock 'return' beat, Duo was resurrected, and the whole thing was revealed to be a stunt to drive daily active users.

Every beat was intentional. Every social platform served as a storytelling location. Every creator was a supporting cast member. And every fan comment, repost, or reaction added fuel to the story.

So what does it take to adopt the Showrunner Model? It starts with a shift in mindset. Don’t just think in campaigns, think in seasons. Don’t just post, build arcs. And don’t just react to what’s trending, be responsible for creating the moment everyone else wants to react to.

​Roberto Max Salas is founder of Young Hero.