The centralized and coordinated launch globally across PR and Paid Media resulted in a total of 45 million views globally across platforms. Amazingly, we managed to achieve this number with 1 in 3 people watching the whole story. This gave us an average engagement of 2 min 56s with the brand (117% more than the online average).

Our plan also resulted in massive sharing with close to 120,000 trackable shares, taking us to the #1 position on the Mashable Viral Video Chart.

Our partnership with Mr. Porter saw close to 1 million highly engaged consumers, interacting with the deeper brand story we had created, including purchases from the shoppable range of clothing.

The deeper story and connections that we created resulted in a 14% increase in brand equity and a 4% increase in brand salience in key markets.

We exceeded our business targets in key markets too – we saw an average of 41% sales increase in the 3 months of the campaign. We expect the campaign’s impact to be felt for longer due to across the board increases in depletion rates at airports.

Our use of data to influence creative, content and media planning paid off, making the “Gentleman’s Wager” campaign Johnnie Walker Blue Label’s most successful global digital campaign till date.

To dial up the emotions of “Inspiration” and “Exhilaration” coming through from the film, we partnered with the top global men’s lifestyle portal – Mr. Porter – to create a bespoke content hub for the brand. We created further video interpretations of the Wager featuring well known KOLs performing tasks they had never done before. A drinks masterclass inspired by the film, and also to inspire viewers was hubbed on the channel as well. And finally, we let viewers acquire the film, and the Blue Label lifestyle, with the creation of an exclusive shoppable range of clothes and accessories from the film.

This partnership enhanced Blue Label’s style and elegance credentials, but also provided monetary gains through an affiliate program around the clothing range.

We then set out to launch the film. We executed a massive coordinated PR and paid media launch across 21 countries in August 2014. We did this with 3 partners – YouTube, Unruly Networks and 7th Chamber – running the campaign from 2 missions control centers in Singapore.

We optimized the campaign in real time using data mining, behavioural targeting & re-targeting, and contextual targeting using the emotional and social cues we had secured from testing. Budgets were therefore efficiently allocated across markets, giving us the best bang for our buck.

This was designed to create global impact, buzz and talkability around the film, as well as drive maximum sharing in a short period of time. Our aim was to make our campaign one of the top trending videos globally which would help with getting more people to engage with more of the story.