The trend of Branded Entertainment (BE) in Germany as a standalone discipline is still lagging behind. The vast majority of campaigns still come from the US-market or refer to international campaigns (e.g. Red Bull – Stratos). So far most of the campaigns are TV campaigns. However, more and more media channels are used (e.g. TV, events, promotions, digital), adding to the positive trend in the German market.

It would have been impossible to include a parody concept like "PlayStation All Stars Battle Royale“ into a regular German TV-Show without massive violation of rules and restrictions regarding branded entertainment in German TV.

To conquer the digital playground, we brought in one of its loudest break-time jokers: the three stars of the channel ApeCrime Reloaded on YouTube and a member of the equally popular Y-Titty team. Together they had the potential to reach several million fans within our target audience. Our mission was to parody "PlayStation All Stars Battle Royale" (ASBR). And parody it we did.

No other major games developer had ever officially tried advertising a new product with an Internet spoof. All the more reason to try it!

The four Internet stars changed into the costumes of the most popular ASBR characters and set to work on anarchical messages and absurd battle sequences. Six different battles were staged with an utter lack of respect for taste. And no matter which character ended up lying defeated on the floor, the result was that our target group ended up lying on floor laughing!

The interactive video parody has been both teams’ most successful video to date:

• 1.9m total views in December 2012 vs. a total potential of 3.2m Male Teens 12-19 years.

• 38,000 interactions with 31,000 likes (only 1.3% dislikes), 6,600 almost entirely positive comments.

• Comments: “Best ApeCrime Video ever!” “Epic Story – haven’t seen such a great video on Youtube in a long time.”

• Efficiency: Outperforming TV - the whole activity only cost half the price of one premium prime time TV spot placement. (CPT index vs. TV: 56!).

• Top 10 Sony PS3 Game in German Amazon sales ranking.

• Amazon User Rating 77%, 4 and 5 Stars (Ø 4,1 of 5).

• Best of E3 2012: Best Fighting Game.