Canada has been active in Branded Entertainment for quite some time. Some of the earliest forms of the creative classification have come from here, from Dove’s “Evolution” to U8TV’s “Lofters”, an online serial web program, an industry first, that caught on across the world over 12-years ago on behalf of a number of different brands at the time. In the past few years, brands have been particularly active in the Branded Entertainment space due to - not unlike the US market - erosion in the effectiveness of traditional advertising. Audiences have moved to online and mobile devices for media consumption, and, in the case of our football sponsorship, the advent of live sports partnership content that runs as a “show” bankrolled by a marketing budget. For many years now, advertisers and media companies have worked closely to leverage “proud sponsorships” into active roles for products and brands that are interesting to audiences, and believable because they are “not ads”. All this in hand, Branded Entertainment is a very competitive space here, where almost all major brands have created compelling content pieces that fight for eyeballs outside of the usual channels.

“Back in the Game” became a 10-part webseries. Documentary film crews followed two teams throughout their first season back playing football. We edited in real time, releasing episodes every week for 3 months. Each episode was seeded, placed in YouTube prerolls, cut down into teasers and clips, released and promoted in stadiums and on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook—all targeting football-loving males. We printed program ads and posters and placed them in stadiums during game days. Ultimately, TSN requested our 30-minute documentary. It ran - unpaid – before the Grey Cup (Canada’s Superbowl) to an audience of nearly half the country.

By the end of the campaign, we saw 7.2 million digital impressions across all digital properties including hashtags, video views, shares and mentions. Social Media sentiment was 96% favorable across all channels. The webseries caught the attention of Canada’s largest sports broadcaster. TSN aired a 30-minute version of the documentary during Grey Cup weekend (Canada’s Superbowl). Ultimately, the documentary earned 104 million TV impressions alone.

In local news across the country, surprise moments where teams received new equipment, uniforms and professional training amounted to 5.4 million earned media impressions.

The impact on Nissan’s business was substantial: over 4000 handraisers at local dealerships (people interested in our vehicles as a result of our activities). Post research saw an 18% increase in key equity measures: consideration, brand preference and intent to purchase and 46% of those aware of the program had increased consideration of buying a Nissan. Best of all, 842 students got to play football again.