In Germany, Branded Entertainment (BE) is an important tool to share engaging & brand relevant information with consumers. At least at first sight, it is often not recognized as classic advertising and thus regarded as particularly trustful.

Within TV, regulations for Branded Entertainment are quiet strong, due to governmental restrictions. Thus, BE needs to be labeled as advertising and can mostly be seen on TV within 5 minutes promotion slots. The individual guidelines and rules for implementation are made by the TV-Stations.

In digital, given the rising power and influence of the consumer, BE is heavily growing, especially with Online (Webisodes) and entertaining viral video content. Due to the ease of social sharing, Online BE is thus highly attractive.

Given those preconditions we decided to exploit the digital opportunities for Bridgestone and were aiming to create the first real-time advertising campaign ever that was purely driven by adrenaline.

Communicating this type of adrenaline-filled experience through traditional media would have been impossible and so instead we threw out the rule book, and did something completely new and radical.

Are we crazy? Probably.

Highly qualified racing drivers (such as the former Formula 1 driver Stefano Modena) aimed for nothing but burnt rubber and the fastest laps. They were accompanied by real-time bloggers, sending out their live reviews of the crazy ride at a breathtaking speed of over 200 km/h - live from THE racing track in Ronda, Spain.

Even though these were not exactly free from spelling mistakes, the heart-racing posts about their unique experience and the tyre’s performance, hit over 130 leading platforms of the digital European automotive scene. Amongst them, portals such as Passion: Driving, Autophorie or NewCarz – all of them covered in real time.

The resulting reports from our bloggers (including industry experts like Jens Stratmann or Jan Gleitsmann) made the reader feel physically in the driving seat of the car and caused an enormous buzz & true engagement. With only approx. 200k EUR of event costs, we generated over 1,000,000 interactions and an earned media value of over 5m EUR.

These figures did not only exceed our wildest expectations, but let sales boost so that just 6 weeks after the campaign start, the tyre was out of stock in Germany, as well as in all major European countries.