With young consumers tuning out marketing messages en masse, big brand advertisers like Microsoft Bing have faced greatly diminishing effectiveness of their advertising. Many – including Bing – have turned to branded entertainment to help stem the declines, but given scale challenges, resource intensity, and consumer cynicism, this tactic has not been a ‘silver bullet.’ Bing had already seen some promise with branded entertainment and integrations – often with up to 6x performance lift compared to traditional ads – but found it challenging to maintain those levels of success, and at the same time encountered challenges with scalability and resource intensity.

Our Millennial target audience is innately curious in seeking information and our custom, unexpected content satisfied their appetite. We pushed out relevant content that the target couldn’t get from other brands. For example, we created vignettes featuring talent from our target's favourite shows, talking about what's to come in the new season - something our target could not get elsewhere. We also created videos that were seeded out on social properties with talent answering fan Q & A - something our target could not get anywhere else. Bing was able to break the mould of traditional custom creative and in turn, consumers felt more connected to “Why Bing?”

We saw an opportunity to partner with the CW – the highest indexing 18-34 broadcast network – to go much deeper than branded entertainment, and instead co-create a slew of new, impactful, non-traditional executions centred around the network’s entire slate of fall premieres. We created a never-been-done-before 360 programme that was a truly integrated cross-channel consumer experience across TV, on-air, mobile and social.

By creating custom content, we were able to engage viewers and tell stories behind key decisions. 10 custom vignettes ran as :30 on-air interstitials and featured CW talent and behind-the-scenes ‘decision-makers’/crew from each of the network’s shows. They discussed key decisions either they or their characters were facing, while incorporating ‘Bing & Decide’ messaging and graphics and depicting use of Bing search as a hero in decision-making. This plus additional exclusive content lived online on CWTV.com, across CW’s mobile property, and both CW and Bing’s owned social media properties.CW gave Bing first-ever, exclusive access to non-commercial inventory to create new ad formats on-air, delivering more than 16.5m impressions and $1.5m in value around executions like Bing-branded lower-third ‘tweets’ and bugs, bumpers, promotional spots and enhanced billboards. In an industry first, CW’s ‘TV to Talk About’ tagline was re-branded for 3 weeks as ‘TV to Bing About’.This partnership delivered on the key needs and desires of all parties involved. Consumers were provided with interesting, exclusive, highly relevant content and a multi-touchpoint human experience that deeply engaged them and delivered value. For Bing, they were able to break through to their new audience in an impactful way, while providing a new canvas to deliver custom content delivering on their ‘Bing & Decide’ message and brand promise.