What do INFINITI’s cancer surviving Hardwood Heroes and Round-By-Round bracket have in common? They’re both UNBUSTABLE. Our cancer survivors, through their indomitable spirit and sheer will, have faced the most difficult challenges imaginable, and did not concede, give up, break, or bust. And, regardless of any bad picks or unexpected upsets, INFINITI’s Round-By-Round bracket always allows you to move on to the next round. Leading up to and during March Madness, our integrated campaign featured our basketball-playing Hardwood Heroes. We presented their personal stories in an epic and inspiring :60 anthem spot and individual :30’s, showing the world their never-give-up, unbroken, unapologetic, #Unbustable spirit.

In addition to the five unique broadcast spots, we executed digitally via March Madness LIVE. Overall, there were 283MM tournement digital impressions & 97.9MM March Madness Lives streams +33% vs. previous year & an all-time streaming record! We shared our Hardwood Heroes’ personal stories on social, encouraging bracket signs ups. Our live exhibition basketball game between our 2017 & 2016 Heroes took place at the Final Four and was broadcast on Facebook Live, featuring CBS announcers. We were one of the first brands to use Facebook Live’s ‘donate’ function encouraging fans to contribute with real-time donations. We also had a live footprint at the Final Four with our activation, Charity Stripe, where anyone in attendance could shoot free-throws to earn further donations to fight cancer, from INFINITI. For playing, we provided participants with a digital takeaway to share (and brag about) their stats and net donations on Facebook and Instagram.

The campaign received 9.4 million video views and drove over 550k Round-By-Round bracket registrations with nearly 11MM total picks. There were over 263,000 Facebook Livestreams of our Hardwood Heroes game. PLUS, INFINITI exceeded booth traffic at the Final Four with the Charity Stripe activation where fans made 2,523 free throws, which tallied another $24,785 in donations to Coaches vs. Cancer.