Branded Entertainment exists in Australia, but is generally very informative, bland and often irrelevant. TV stations are slowly coming round to the idea of working with brands to create and promote more interesting and creative Branded Entertainment. Our Slow Lights branded entertainment piece entered life as a 10-second billboard brief. The TV station, involved on hearing the idea, offered a 30-second in programme piece, which then grew to 60 seconds. As a beer brand, Carlton Draught had the added challenge of complying with the very strict advertising standards that exist in Australia relating to alcohol advertising.

The AFL (Australian Rules Football) is the highest profile sport in Australia, with the grand final attracting nearly 3m viewers. As a result, it is highly contested commercial battlefield. There are dozens of brands sponsoring the event and the different teams. Carlton Draught’s objective for 2011 was to be the brand that everyone was talking about at the AFL. We achieved this by running weekly branded in programme pieces during half time and full time of AFL games, leveraging not only Carlton Draught’s sponsorship of the AFL but also Carlton Draughts much loved Slow Mo commercial.

The AFL and TV stations loved the idea, meaning a 10” billboard soon turned into 60” in program content. We had something no other AFL sponsor had, which got us reach of over 85% in our key markets of Victoria and South Australia. This equated to $2m of media for free. More importantly, we became part of the conversation. On Grand Final, Twitter was dominated by 2 AFL conversations – how much everyone hated Meatloaf’s halftime performance, and how much they love Carlton Draught’s slow-motion footage of punters.