In the UK, ‘Branded Entertainment’ is increasing in popularity as a means by which brands can facilitate dialogue with consumers; developing novel experiences and interactions to express their beliefs, values and product benefits in engaging and compelling ways. Success is about striking a balance between on-point brand messaging and legitimately compelling content.

Online Branded Entertainment content in the UK must conform to the Code of Non-broadcast Advertising, Sales Promotion and Direct Marketing (CAP Code), which is enforced by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).

For this entry, online Branded Entertainment content was developed with the media and content partner, the Syndicate Project, as a means to both recruit and encourage the target audience to participate in the campaign and engage with the brand on their social channels.

We wanted Fridge Raiders to be eaten after school by teens. With 61% of them gaming after school we needed to be part of gaming culture.

We uncovered a real problem gamers face; they play games for hours building up an appetite but unable to snack for fear of losing a life. Fridge Raiders were the perfect snack because they lacked the grease and crumbs of other snacks. We showcased this with a device that would feed gamers Fridge Raiders hands-free. This appealed to the audience’s love of gadgets.

Rather than advertise on a gaming site we formed a partnership with a gaming celebrity. This gave the brand credibility and acted as our media channel.

Over an 8 week period during the campaign, sales increased 65% versus the same period a year ago. For every £1 spent we generated £5.73 in incremental sales.

The number of fans on Facebook went from 0 to over 127,000. Cost per like was £0.39, over 6 times more efficient than the industry average of £2.50.

We achieved over 126m impressions of our content on Facebook with a total reach of 31m people. Facebook media generated a click-through-rate of 0.6%, well above the industry average of 0.04%.

The campaign received close to 1m engagements with a cost per engagement of only 5p versus the industry average of 40p.

The video content from the campaign was viewed over 3 million times, gaining over 290,000 ‘Likes’ on YouTube.

It was a truly collaborative campaign with over 15,000 ideas submitted by our community, 53,000 visits to the submission tab tab on Facebook and an average dwell time of 1m 36s. We had everything from detailed CAD drawings, to designs for helicopters, tanks, catapults and everything in between. The engagement with the campaign was unprecedented in terms of fans going to extra mile to take part in the campaign. One girl said she'd get a tattoo of the Fridge Raiders logo in exchange for free product!