YouTube has generated popular content channels run by Millenials, who produce weekly videos that reach millions of views each month. These home-made videos are self-funded, allowing them to keep their content advertising-free.

To identify a surprising and valuable presence for BlackBerry into this content, we started collaborating with 5 of these influential Millenials and came up with The Level Up Series: BlackBerry Q5 helps the YouTubers to fulfil a dream ambition that their fans were waiting to happen. Facilitating these unique experiences justified BlackBerry’s involvement.

The YouTubers were given control over the editing of the videos to maintain their personal style and they uploaded the content on their YouTube channels and endorsed it via their social channels. To increase the reach beyond their followers, teasers of the videos were broadcast on YouTube and they shared their Level Up experiences in advertorial articles and radio shows.

BlackBerry levelled up brand collaborations in social media: More than 2 Million Millenials watched the Level Up videos, generating more than 100,000 likes and 20,000 comments, many of those showing the appreciation that Millenials have for the genuine collaboration between BlackBerry and the YouTubers. This was also reflected in the view-through rates of the pre-rolls, the highest seen in this category according to YouTube.

The enthusiasm for the unique video content generated reposting of the content by their fans, resulting in an additional exposure of more than 5 Million impressions, 10,000 comments and 60,000 likes in social media.