In 2010, German law changed towards a more liberal use of product placement. For the first time in Germany, brands were able to buy product integration in TV shows and series. Thus, product placement became a media channel, taken into consideration by marketers, agencies and media owners.

But there are still restrictions: Brands are not allowed to dominate the content, the price of a product must not be mentioned, editorial staff have to agree to every single brand integration beforehand and in most cases no guarantees about brand visibility are given. These regulations make establishing a product placement very complex despite the legal opportunities and require more time than most brands are willing to invest.

We produced teaser spots with two of the soaps dancing stars who called our audience to participate in our campaign: by taping and uploading their interpretation of the choreography to YouTube. The participants had the chance to win a grand prize - a luxurious trip to India! Additionally, the ultimate incentive for our audience to participate was the chance to see their own content on TV! The 'Call to Action' trailer spots were aired after the soaps episodes for one month, as pre-rolls and mid-rolls within RTL's whole soap portfolio online and flanked by display and teaser ads. After this first stage of our campaign, follow up voting trailers brought our whole target audience (not just those who send in their video) to vote for their favorite ChaiLa Dance version and to participate in a raffle. Finally, the three best voted fan choreographies competed against each other in a jury-led final over two rounds, which was broadcasted on RTL.

Taking into consideration that making up and taping a whole choreography for a three-minute-song and uploading it to YouTube presents a big hurdle, most of the submitted videos are a huge success. Some of the videos even feature more than 50 people so the participation rate is actually higher than the number of submitted choreographies. The high number of votes shows that the contest was of great interest even for those who only participated in the raffle. The campaign paid off for the audience and our client:

+ 55% sales

+ 200% brand awareness

+ 100% buying intention

41% aided ad recall

89% ad recognition

9.689 downloads of the song

> 100 submitted videos

> 73.500 votes

> 2.600 raffle participants