In 2018 there were more images taken than ever before, yet the camera market was in decline. There were 84% less camera shipments in 2018 that the industry’s peak in 2010.

The big camera brands had their older core consumer convinced - the battle was for a new, younger consumer. They will try their hand at lots of interests; anything from surfing to pottery, beer making, filmmaking and photography.

They’re young, ambitious and look up the new world of YouTube creators for inspiration, hoping to emulate them and use the kit they do.

The majority of these new consumers are aware of Canon but don’t yet see them as

relevant to their life. We set out to bring 300,000 of this notoriously hard to reach

audience into the camera market and also double our market share for entry level

cameras.

Our creative team challenged 40 of the world's most inspiring creators to tell us their ultimate story - the one thing they want to do but haven’t had the chance yet. The best story came back from a group of world famous YouTubers and parkour athletes, Storror, who were approaching 1m followers.

We worked with them to develop ‘Crossing Continents - from Europe to Asia by parkour’, a feat they could only achieve freerunning across Istanbul, the one city that straddles both continents. It also required them to freerun over moving obstacles - from boats and trains, to shipping containers and even people.

We gave over control, allowing them to plan, direct, shoot, perform and edit our films, all with Canon’s latest kit and a full production team. They ensured that, whilst the film remained in Storror’s distinctive style, it was visually like nothing they’d been able to create before.

We had to put Canon's 'Live for the story' positioning into action and demonstrate their role in telling great stories. We had to do this in a way that would make our audience watch it across the relevant channels.

To bring our positioning to life, inspire our audience and show what our products could really do, creating an ad construct featuring actors and placed on broadcast channels wouldn’t have made us any more relevant. We needed to:

- Find real people to embody our attitude

- Use them to access this elusive group of ‘adventurous achievers’

- Develop a mind-blowing idea

- Show the role our kit and its features played in capturing the story

We’d used the stunt to draw consumers in, then showed behind the scenes edits and shorter product feature films to demonstrate our role and what Canon cameras did to bring this incredible feat to life.

The campaign lived on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, partner websites and DOOH sites from June till August 2018. It was designed to take the audience from general Canon awareness to favouring the brand and considering a camera.

Storror posted our 3 films on their YouTube channel consecutive Mondays, to drive awareness and entertain their followers:

1. Crossing continents - the challenge

2. Crossing continents - behind the scenes

3. Boat jump fail, a behind the scenes look at a failed stunt

They also posted over 100 Instagram posts and stories teasing the content..

We amplified these with shorter YouTube Trueview films, Instagram stories, DOOH, Facebook link ads and carousels to drive favourability. These featured the stunt and Canon kit being used.

Lastly, we used 4 x 10” product films to drive consideration, highlighting the product features. They were shown to those we who had completed a view of the other content.

The campaign lived on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, partner websites and DOOH sites from June till August 2018. It was designed to take the audience from general Canon awareness to favouring the brand and considering a camera.

Storror posted our 3 films on their YouTube channel on consecutive Mondays, all to drive awareness and entertain their followers:

1. Crossing continents - the challenge

2. Crossing continents - behind the scenes

3. Boat jump fail, a behind the scenes look at a failed stunt

They also posted over 100 Instagram posts and stories teasing the content.

We amplified these with shorter YouTube Trueview films, Instagram stories, DOOH, Facebook link ads and carousels to drive favorability. These featured the stunt and Canon kit being used.

We used 4 x 10” product films to drive consideration, all highlighting a different product attribute and shown to those who had completed a view of the other content.

Overall our campaign went far beyond our targets:

? 10.3M organic YouTube views

? 72.4% of viewers were 18-35

? 98% positive sentiment

? Over 31.2M YouTube paid views and 17.9M completed views (57%)

? 9.1% lift in brand favourability (Best YouTube film in Tech Category)

? 6.2M Facebook and Instagram views and 258.4k click-throughs

? 2.2M views on Thrillist, with 79% saying it was ‘likeable’, 64% saying ‘different’ and 66% saying ‘more interested in purchasing Canon now’

? 25% increase in purchase intent from those shown the content

? Press coverage reached 27.6M people in the UK and, after being picked up round Europe, reached 137.2M people in total

? Over 540K Canon website visits

? 56% increase in year on year sales of the 4000D entry level model

And Storror got to make their ultimate story, reaching 3.9M subscribers, up from 1M at the start of the campaign.