While the term “branded content” is widely used across the advertising industry, its definition is presently a work in progress. And without a concrete understanding of what the practice entails, the U.S. sector of the industry has, to date, been unable to establish official regulations in the same way that it has for traditional advertising models.

Regardless, organizations such as the Federal Trade Commission, the American Society of Magazine Editors, and the Interactive Advertising Bureau have respectively proposed ‘best practices’ for the creation and implementation of branded content. And while their opinions differ in numerous respects, one principle remains at the forefront of each proposition: that transparency is key to the success of content marketing.

As with traditional print, television, out of home, and even banner advertising, it has been proven that branded content must be utterly conspicuous in order to foster a relationship between the affiliated brand and audience that is grounded in trust.

And until a set of concrete regulations is created and enforced, it continues to be up to creative shops, themselves, to balance absolute creative freedom with the responsibility to self-regulate.

Our dynamic original content campaign for Dawn of the Planet of the Apes heightened the films' universe with expansive narratives while simultaneously grounding it in the real-world via an illuminating documentary.

Although it may seem farfetched to purport a story as the real-world parallel to a fantastical Hollywood film about a warring culture of hyper-intelligent apes, viewers were blindsided by its shocking resonance.

Following its debut across VICE's YouTube channels, our 17-minute documentary and short film series took the internet by storm becoming an unprecedented viral sensation earning a staggering amount of social shares and organic media pick-up.

The program was extremely successful because of our movie marking approach. Our audience love and believe in the original content we create. We were able revisit a nostalgic memory only the core audience held and create an entirely new generation of Apes fans. One week before the films theatrical launch, the series set fire to the internet and was viewed online by more than 5.1 million fans worldwide, 19 million social impressions, press articles received 25 Million views and, of the 58 domestic press outlets covering the series, 98% mentioned the movie and 57% mentioned the release date. Overall this program helped gain Dawn of the Planet of the Apes to gross $710,000,000 million worldwide.