The Game of Zones and McDonald’s custom ad content included mobile brand integration through custom branded Instagram stories alongside promotion during the NBA on TNT. This creative series that takes 6 weeks to create each episode requires unique ways to take the dramatic moments in the NBA and blend them into a medieval fantasy world that they’ve created.

By blending arguably one of the world’s most recognized and sincere brands in McDonald’s with our premium original content that uses extensive knowledge of all of the personalities in the league, the series and this unique brand partnership inserts viewers in the cultural conversation surrounding the NBA and its athletes, and it does so with stellar animation.

This branded content has viewers laughing until they cry, before realizing it’s time for a McDonald’s ‘Big Mac’ just like the one LeBron James and Kevin Durant had an epic sword battle over.

We used our premium storytelling and unforgettable content to carry the McDonald’s brand point of view. The popular film series knows the power of reference to pop cultures and impactful players stories, and by pairing this content with McDonald’s, the No. 1 fast-food restaurant in the world, we knew our audience would continue to engage and positively interact with this content. Just like all of our premium content, B/R distributes this content where our fans live, whether on IG, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and inside Bleacher Report’s app. Our fans continue to be captivated by the honest, relevant, and entertaining content, resulting in an unstoppable brand partnership that knows the friendly and unique spirit that defines these young fans.

McDonald’s partnered on the second half of Game of Zones season five, and also worked with the creators to make short interstitials that integrated directly into the brand story. What’s more, we also produced custom Instagram Stories featuring this creative to give the story and even bigger impact – all firsts for Game of Zones. Game of Zones eclipsed more than 20MM cross-platform views including more than 750K social interactions. As a premiere franchise in our content portfolio, we were incredibly pleased with the audience sentiment of the entire series.

Fans ate up the inside jokes, creative approach to player satire and general ingenuity of an animated series that blends Game of Thrones with the NBA. Through the brand integration with McDonalds, the IG stories hit more than 5MM total views and seamlessly integrated into an established and wildly popular series.

The campaign hit 2.5x more than the average FB views compared to our typical branded/sponsored videos. The campaign also hit 2.5x the average Twitter views across this same metric and 1.5x the average Instagram views. The social sentiment was a resounding success with 1.4x higher average FB interactions than all of the organic B/R content, in which 99% of the interactions were positive and the top three FB emotional reactions included “Like, Love and HAHA.” Can’t overlook a good “haha” or fire emoji in the comments as a grand indicator of success.