In North America, as in most countries, there are strict regulations that protect the usage rights of known images and personalities. This extends for those playing in teams for the uniforms, badges or franchise imagery with extensive contracts required.

We partnered with the digital magazine The Onion. This hugely successful site draws millions daily, with offbeat, irreverent humor and was the main hub for our video series.

We used core marketing tactics to expand reach from rich media OLA, Native ad placements, Social promotions, clients owned touchpoints as well as a TUMBLR built specifically to house and optimize our content.

But the beauty to our idea was that the famous sports stars and commentators in our video series promoted the show to their millions of followers as if it was real. This meant audiences came due to organic recommendation.

In 2012 Lenovo created a video series using NFL stars with total plays of 500,012. In 2013 our first episode alone reached that figure – with our second episode seen by 1.52 million. We had completion rates of over 80% vs a 2012 completion rate of 55% and total cumulative viewing is now 91 years!

With stars and commentators posting their influence grew the campaign impact with follows and quotes across the social map. ESPN and The Bleacher Report, have already picked up our story helped by players and franchises and likes per episode have doubled growing from 3,000 to 7,000. Shares have also grown x 4 to over 1,000.

And for our core brand metrics?

Aided awareness up 15 points. Brand favorability up 9 points. Purchase consideration up 7 points.

For our consumer they were treated to a funny, engaging celebrity filled web series – but more than that we made sure they were rewarded - as a final moment for our Fantasy meets Reality idea we picked one lucky participant and gave them the ultimate fan prize – to select the real players in one of the biggest games of the season – the 2013 Pro Bowl.