Brand funded content and entertainment is among the fastest growing areas of marketing in the UK, driven by its evolution from simple advertorial and sponsorship to now encompass everything from multi-platform content partnerships with media owners, to YouTube videos and brand owned websites and social media channels.

In a time of continuing digital disruption entertainment content is increasingly important for brands: as UK consumers’ attention is spread across ever more screens, channels and platforms, brands need to find new ways to stay relevant. Entertainment is directly linked to people’s passions, interests and hobbies, so offers exactly the type of engagement required to inspire the links and shares needed to drive visibility in a world dominated by Google, Facebook and Twitter.

Meanwhile, the pressure of declining traditional advertising revenues for media owners means it isn’t just brands that are evolving their approach, with UK publishers, producers and talent all looking for new ways to defend and grow revenues through brand partnerships.

UK branded entertainment has specific regulations in broadcast, where Ofcom limits brand prominence and influence in editorial. In other media it is covered by the ASA’s Advertising Codes, which include stipulations about transparency and clear labelling of any paid content.

During the 5th December episode of Hollyoaks, Patrick loses his temper with Maxine. Immediately afterwards, our first advert featuring the two characters in a special extra scene debuted in the advert break.

Our two hard-hitting TV adverts showed Maxine and Patrick in extra scenes of abuse & rape, highlighting the issue and aiming to make it unacceptable. They ran not just on Channel 4 but in teen programmes on other channels to make sure we delivered maximum fame and reach for the campaign.

We extended the storyline further with three exclusive extra scenes that ran exclusively online.

To further highlight how abusive relationships evolve, we created a bespoke timeline on the Hollyoaks Facebook page, that reached nearly 2 million fans.

Teens love to talk about Hollyoaks online, so we placed messages wherever these conversations were happening, covering fan conversations on Facebook, Twitter and teen celeb websites Digital Spy and Sugarscape.

Early signs of attitude shift are promising: Perceptions that abuse is ‘extremely / very serious’ grew from 79% to 88% amongst Hollyoaks viewers. Intentions to report abusive behaviour grew from 69% to 75%.

Using Hollyoaks characters is popular: – 85% agreed that ‘it is a good way to teach young people about an important issue’ and 77% said it ‘made it easier for me to understand this issue’,

Our website has had 864,000 unique visits website and the content has had 1.5m YouTube views.

We also got priceless coverage in all major news outlets including the BBC and The Guardian.