As the official sponsor of the NBA, Budweiser set out to create an emotional piece of content to celebrate the legacy of one of the league’s greatest retiring players: Dwyane Wade. Our brief was to create a film that could debut online, and become part of the conversation, on the morning of Wade’s final home game with KPIs tied specifically to social mentions, campaign impressions, and video views. Our objective was to help the world say farewell to one of the best basketball players of this generation.

We surprised Dwyane Wade with jersey swaps from five people he’d impacted the most off the court. While not everyone had an actual jersey to swap with Wade, they all brought something that was emblematic of how he had helped them. Wade helped one woman overcome trauma after her brother was killed in one of America’s worst school shootings. She brought Wade the jersey her brother wore in his last game. Wade even bought his own mother a church after she was released from prison, giving her a new lease on life and the ability to lead a community. She gave Wade the robe she wore in her first service as a pastor. We showed how a basketball legend had a legacy bigger than basketball and created a piece of content that audiences could connect with on a real, emotional level.

Our strategy wasn’t just to focus on beer drinkers or sports fans and the publications that speak to those audiences. We wanted to create something that people of all walks of life could connect to. With such a broad audience, it was crucial that we rooted our story in sports but didn’t necessarily tell a sports story. Sport became the backdrop of a story that spoke to a human truth we could all connect to. This strategy gave people who love Dwyane Wade a new way to connect to their hero while also giving people who had never heard of Wade an emotional story to connect with, a story that spoke to the good inside us all. Ultimately, we knew news outlets were going to cover Wade’s last game, but we wanted to give them something unique to cover to allow our asset to literally become a piece of news.

We surprised Dwyane Wade with jersey swaps from the people he’s impacted the most off the court in a powerful, four-minute film. We debuted the film the morning of Wade’s last home game in Miami on April 9th across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. Later that day, the film played inside the Miami Heat’s sold-out stadium, giving Wade the chance to see it for the first time minutes before he stepped on his home court for the final time. For those watching at home, we ran the film on TV on Fox Sports Sun, the TV network that covers the Miami Heat in Florida.

The film wasn’t just covered by the news, it became the news. Anyone who was talking about Wade’s retirement was using our film to do the talking. NBC called the film, “An incredible, emotional tribute.” Fortune warned readers, “If you don’t want to ugly cry at your desk, then save this one for later.” CNN went so far as to air the film in its entirety during a primetime news broadcast. Within hours of its launch, the film caused three different hashtags to trend simultaneously on Twitter and ended with the highest view through rate of any ad in the history of the platform. Two days later, the film had the most social mentions for any campaign in the history of Budweiser, had garnered $6 million in earned media, 50 million views, 1.9 billion impressions and week over week IRI data reported a 3% national sales lift.