In the Netherlands there is a trend towards partnerships between advertisers/agencies/publishers in the ownership and exploitation of branded content & entertainment. Content marketing is becoming increasingly important for marketers, as it is important that the product or brand will be shown or used in a natural non-promotional way. Branded promotions is seen as the way forward.

On TV in the Netherlands non-spot and in-program branded promotions possibilities are often not fully being exploited. A product placement in program is most of the times a one media channel promotion, based on one or two moments. There is a shift towards a stronger integrated partnership, through all communication touch points.

In our case, ‘Verliefd op Ibiza’, success was created by connecting our brand to the right partner with the most relevant content for our target audience and linking the partnership with Crystal Clear’s brand belief, objectives & messages.

By having a perfect fit, we had the ability to reach our audience based on their own interests through our partners content; connecting with our audience in a natural way.

Crystal Clears branded in-program promotion in the entire series were closely connected to Suus.

We activated our women via price-activation; by telling Crystal Clear how their ideal holiday on Ibiza looked like, our audience could win it!

Besides putting Crystal Clear present as part of and in the series, we added a unique branded content experience. Our audience could decide how their series ended! Should Suus choose for a life ‘with’ or ‘without’ DJ Lo? Unique in the Netherlands!

Making the ‘What makes YOU happy?’ branded narrative a starting point for all communication; brand relevance and engagement were created in a singular way across all touchpoints. The partnership extended from TV, print & online advertorials, social media, all the way to the shop shelves and on-pack promotion.

We gave our women control of what they watch, bringing Crystal Clear brand perspective & belief perfectly alive.

The campaign and partnership had a strong positive effect on all key brand KPI’s of Crystal Clear. Brand loyalty rose +16%, good price/value ratio increased +17% and Crystal Clear "unlike other brands' rose +15%. The overall brand consideration, which let to more sales, increased by +9% (Metrixlab, relative percentages).

The series and Crystal Clear experiences made a big stir in among viewers in Holland. On Twitter this resulted in 160% more tweets than ‘Holland's Got Talent’, which is a big socially-media engaged voting TV-program and programmed at the same time as ‘Verliefd op Ibiza’. More than 8,500 women voted on their perfect ending of the series.

And as in almost every love-story, happy endings are more popular. That’s why our audience chooses a life for Suus with her love DJ Lo.