While the term branded content is widely used across the advertising industry, its definition is presently a work in progress. And without a concrete understanding of what the practice entails, the U.S. sector of the industry has, to date, been unable to establish official regulations in the same way that it has for traditional advertising models.

Regardless, organizations such as the Federal Trade Commission, the American Society of Magazine Editors, and the Interactive Advertising Bureau have respectively proposed ‘best practices’ for the creation and implementation of branded content. And while their opinions differ in numerous respects, one principle remains at the forefront of each proposition: that transparency is key to the success of content marketing.

As with traditional print, television, out of home, and even banner advertising, it has been proven that branded content must be utterly conspicuous in order to foster a relationship between the affiliated brand and audience that is grounded in trust.

And until a set of concrete regulations is created and enforced, it continues to be up to creative shops, themselves, to balance absolute creative freedom with the responsibility to self-regulate.

In 2014, AT&T partnered with us and engaged our creative services arm to connect with a new generation of mobile consumers.

Together, we created The Mobile Movement, a groundbreaking multi-platform program and advertising campaign celebrating the mobile lives of the Millennial generation.

We traveled the country listening to the stories of real young AT&T customers, and found out how their phone and the Network are changing their lives.

We called our program The Mobile Movement, which reached this mobile generation through advertising, content, and social communications, and launching at a massive SXSW event featuring top musical talent and interactive installations by young mobile innovators.

In addition to advertising featuring real young AT&T subscribers, we built two new youth social channels for AT&T on Tumblr and YouTube. We quickly met and surpassed best-in-class benchmarks for retention and engagement, in addition to creating the most-engaged sponsored post on Tumblr in 2014.

The Network Diaries is a short film series inspired by the real stories of AT&T subscribers and how the AT&T Network impacts their lives. The first film premiered at SXSW 2014 featuring Hollywood talent, generating earned media coverage and a highly engaged audience of over 1.4M with overwhelmingly positive sentiment.

The film was premiered to a VIP audience, including the stars and director of the film, at The Mobile Movement event at SXSW, which saw over 15,000 attendees over three days. After SXSW, the film went live online, supported on YouTube and Tumblr.

?We used GIFs pulled from funny and poignant moments from the film to create sharable entry points to the film, used social targeting on Facebook and Twitter to find fans of the film’s stars, and widely distributed a trailer prominently featuring recognizable talent on YouTube to bring in as many digital eyes to the film as possible.

Premiering at SXSW to an audience of influencers, to date the film has received over 1.4MM views on YouTube laying the foundation for episodes two and three to be released in 2015. The films communicate the real personal experiences AT&T customers have with the network to drive deeper, more authentic connection between young people and the brand.

The Network Diaries series is based on true stories of AT&T subscribers - the first in the series, "Let’s Get Digital" illustrates how the AT&T network literally facilitated a modern love connection. AT&T’s youth marketing emphasizes the power of mobility and what it can do for young people in America. To demonstrate this key brand messaging, we took a real story and transformed it into a cinematic short film featuring Hollywood favorites like Jon Heder from "Napoleon Dynamite".

A constant thread throughout "Let’s Get Digital" is the invisible AT&T network, which functions as an impetus for action, intrigue, character development and ultimately the formation of relationships. Essentially a product placement, the narrative would not exist without it!