In Spain, branded entertainment is gradually being assigned greater importance. An example is Papanatos.com (an online miniseries that promotes brands), in which the series contents are followed with a product presentation and a series-product hashtag is created to make the product more dynamic. Product placement as a regular technique for enticing customers is still, however, much more common in Spain.While MEPs and publishers’ associations favour the self-regulation of advertising and a flexible regulatory framework, in Spain there also exists a body called Autocontrol, which undertakes to ensure that advertising is legal, honest and fair. It essentially both guarantees that materials are not unethical, and acts as a measure to prevent possible censure. In the financial sector, in which our campaign was run, strict controls (imposition of a legal notice and guarantees that information is neither partial nor ambiguous, etc.) are applied.

The audience were very much attracted, as we succeeded in generating interesting content that was not geared to sell a product, but rather to show another aspect of a subject (the future). It featured prestigious, credible figures such as Guardiola, whose media impact was considerable as he dealt with the future at a time when the renewal of his contract at FC Barcelona remains unresolved. We succeeded in appropriating a format (face-to-face) associated with government debates, with interviews on late-night television programmes or with sports interviews. Twitter users, meanwhile, created hashtags with proposals for new pairs of figures.

The campaign was a resounding success and prompted a 38.1% increase in uptake over the previous quarter (and a total of 286,560 new clients in 2011), the bank’s highest ever shares of awareness (over 4 times the sum awareness of our competitors), quantified advertising of almost €1m, over 1.2m views on YouTube and 487,000 entries in Google, making the face-to-face format our very own.