There aren’t any restrictions when it comes to branded entertainment other than our ability to sell or persuade media distribution owners to use our content. No matter how compelling or how effective a brand’s content may be at driving viewership, there’s significant conflict among media owners to change their compensation model from advertising dollars to branded content partnerships. Even when or if a media owner’s programming department considers partnering with a brand, the same group’s media sales department deters progress by imposing aggressive media investment conditions across their property(ies).

Similarly, we struggle to find a global media owner with scale across multiple countries, let alone our core basketball countries outside of the US, such as China, Istanbul, France, Argentina, Philippines, and Japan. As a result we call upon new and converging media opportunities and never done before distribution strategies that leverage an owned/earned/paid media architecture.

We relied on paid social media products and on both adidas’ and Rose’s owned social platforms to gain targeted viewership of the 6-part series. Paid assets included YouTube’s Tru-View, Twitter’s Promoted Tweets & Trends, Facebook’s Sponsored Stories, and Search products; these paid investments ignited viewership and shares. We incorporated these tactics at the debut of each new episode. The TVC was placed in high affinity sports programming. We knew that search and TV correlation was high so we deployed a search strategy to align with TV investments, which ultimately drove new exposure back to the 6-part branded series.

During Rose’s darkest hour, adidas kept him top of mind, despite missing the NBA postseason, 2012 Olympics, and the start of the 2013 NBA season. Rose’s search volume during the start of the 2013 season was on par with Kobe, and slightly under Lebron - two Nike basketball players who’s summer plans weren’t interrupted. Feeling competitive pressure, Lebron moved his signature shoe release up to the same day.

The irrelevant became relevant. adidas and DRose redefined sports marketing and the player/fan connection. The personal connection, consumer stories, and overall continuity of this marketing effort continues and is unmatched by any prior adidas campaigns. Sports commentators not only used our content in programming, but still mention the #TheReturn as nomenclature for injured players.

The web films garnered over 18 million views globally. Our “Wake Up” TVC was organically shared by celebrities with huge Twitter followings: Ashton Kutcher (14M) and Common (2M). #TheReturn trended 3x nationally. Over 300k #TheReturn mentions through Nov. 2012. Followers of @adidasbasketball grew 100+% (20k to 42k). Significant increase in the association of Rose and adidas – of Rose tweets 11% mention #TheReturn, 7% our commercial, 5% adidas. Facebook fans grew by 441k, Facebook conversation increased by 200%.