Despite the government allowing paid for Product Placement on TV five years ago, branded entertainment continues to lag behind other markets on broadcast TV. Instead most branded entertainment exists online and it is predominantly created in partnership with a media owner or publisher; the media owner not only has expertise in creating entertaining content, but they also have an audience and can guarantee exposure through a media deal. Alternatively brands are using social media and video hosting platforms like YouTube to publish branded entertainment direct to consumers, allowing the brand to fully own and control the creative direction of the content. Often this content is an adjunct of an Ad – ie a longer form version – reliant on paid media to generate views. There is plenty of debate within the UK’s branded content marketing community as to whether this Ad focused content is genuinely branded entertainment, which should be something that an audience will actively seek out and be entertained by.

We composited players’ facial features on actors using visual effects. They fatter, balder or the opposite sex compared to their famous relatives!

Using Mertesacker’s bushy eyebrows, Ewan Macintosh (‘Keith’, The Office) as Oxlade-Chamberlain’s plane-spotting relative and Uncle Kenny Wilshere as failed midfielder-cum-plumber, we compiled a confounding video released via YouTube in time for the big match. We created a Facebook Arsenal Family page.

Then, just one day later, and with interest in the production truly alight, we released ‘Behind the scenes of Europcar’s Arsenal Family Film’, confirming that we were poking fun and players were in on the gag.

Our staggering results brought success to the Europcar brand and a sense of humour to Arsenal fans. 72 hours after releasing the video online, we received more than one million views. The video has since been viewed more than two million times, while 38,000+ people have seen the ‘Behind the scenes’ follow up.

Within a fortnight the Wilshere, Oxlade-Chamberlain and Mertesacker ‘families’ had 22,000+ likes and 1,200+ comments across Facebook and YouTube. And subscribers to the Europcar YouTube channel increased by a staggering 645% as people signed up to see more content about our ‘Arsenal Family’.

More importantly Europcar Brand awareness increased by 166% to 28% amongst viewers surpassing all other competitors within the category.

The team’s proudest moment was seeing the anecdotal feedback:

“The people at Europcar have come up with the rarest of things: an advertisement with footballers that's actually funny” - The Bleacher Report

“THIS IS THE BEST THING I’VE EVER SEEN… Apart from Arsenal lifting the FA Cup last season!!!!!” - Fraser Wills, Facebook Arsenal Fan

Final validation of the quality of our content came when Premier League Productions broadcast it to 88 countries and more than 100m viewers prior to the Arsenal Manchester United match!