Border shopping is a unique concept in the border area between Denmark and Germany due to the high discrepancy in price between the countries. Denmark has 25% VAT (19% in Germany) and on products such as cigarettes, soda and candy there’s an added tax.

Giving that you have to physically drive across the border this creates a highly unique shopping experience that is associated heavily with middle-aged to older people driving across the border to load up on alcohol, cigarettes and candy as cheaply as possible.

“Crossing the Line” had to work on two levels. It needed to:

• Cross the line for what was considered appropriate brand communication.

• Physically cross the border between Germany and Denmark.

We hired Denmark's biggest jet-set playboy, Casper Christensen. He encapsulates the direct opposite of everything Fleggaard stood for – and was loved by the audience.

He would be cast as the main character in six episodes webisodes and viewers would follow him

on a debauched trip to the border where he believes that he has become the ambassador for the luxury brand, Fleggaard. As he discovers the dreary reality, he trash-talks the brand, its low-priced products and customers, and ends up having to flee across the border.

The mockumentary blended fiction and reality as people followed along across TV, YouTube and social and saw both Casper’s and Fleggaard’s side of the brand story going horribly wrong.

To increase penetration, Fleggaard needed to appeal to an audience that didn’t feel that the category was relevant to them and had no love for the brand.

More than 50% of them use ad blockers and they are increasingly difficult to reach via traditional media. A qualitative deep dive into the most popular entertainment formats made it clear that traditional brand communication would struggle to appeal to them.

Our research uncovered that although they might find the category or brand appealing, they were big fans of the products – and were most certainly able to buy the very cheaply priced products. We just needed to address the perception of the brand being associated with the low social classes (see cultural context).

An ethnographic study revealed a preference for communication that leveraged irony and didn’t take itself too seriously – something most brands struggle with.

To reach them effectively, we would have to disregard advertising’s traditional self-praising of advertising.

We had to:

• Be entertainment not advertising.

• Talk in the language of the audience.

• Make fun of our “low class” image.

The idea was formulated as “Crossing the Line” – going further than any retailer had dared to go.

Fleggard became part of the cultural conversation as it “crossed the line” for how a brand could talk about both its customers and itself.

10 million views by 1.7 million unique Danes made the series part of top 10 of all Danish TV shows. This translated into a 33% increase in top-of-mind awareness and as Casper slacked off the “cheap crap” the price perception decreased 14% among the target audience – making even more people rush to buy great products at cheap prices.

Traffic to Fleggaard's website increased by 68% and as Casper drank “cat piss in a can” the sales revenue of can beers soared 23% alongside many other products, which resulted in a 10% increase of the sales revenue that year.

As a result, Fleggaard managed to increase its revenue by €8,2 million, generating a ROMI of 5.5 on incremental revenue – returning €5,5 for every €1 invested.