Tooned was broadcast in the UK during advertising space and therefore had to conform to Ofcom and Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) guidelines. Of most concern for branded content is the stipulation that it should be made obviously distinguishable from editorial content when its aim as a format is to mirror editorial quality and production values. The rules, as stated by CAP, stipulate that “the audience should quickly recognise the message as an advertisement.” Tooned was clearly labelled as McLaren-branded content during its opening sequence and closing title card, while episodes also carried a brief ‘advertisement’ caption in the middle. There are also guidelines for shows aimed at or suitable for children that apply to all forms of broadcast advertising: not condoning dangerous behavior and not taking advantage of children’s inexperience for example.

Following a global study of Formula 1’s audience demographic, McLaren saw it needed to find a way of engaging a younger generation of viewers and so Tooned was born. The main objective was to create a platform that McLaren could use to introduce its drivers, sponsors and history to that young audience, and branded content – specifically a high quality animated comedy series – was the perfect strategy for that.

It was created in partnership with an Oscar-winning visual effects studio to bring humour to the McLaren brand and engage with a new audience from a young age. First broadcast in the build-up to the British Grand Prix last July and then shown during Sky Sport’s pre-race show until the end of the season, Tooned grew into something McLaren fans, F1 fans and even newcomers to the sport looked forward to as much as the race.

The three-minute comedy stories centred around McLaren’s all-British team of Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton, with guidance coming from Professor M, the sensible, methodical voice of McLaren (actually voiced by comedian Alexander Armstrong), often literally driven to his wits’ end by the enthusiasm of Jenson and Lewis.

Tooned was initially commissioned to drive global audience engagement through digital channels but it has now grown into a fully-blown media property broadcast as a TV series by Sky. It also offers extended branding opportunities for McLaren’s partners, something that sponsors are already taking advantage of this year in order to reach a new audience using a very different tone. So far the venture has resulted in an impressive online following, a wide range of merchandise and became its DVD distributor’s best selling title over Christmas. With more episodes and a foray into gaming coming this year, Tooned is set to grow and grow.

The show was shown on Sky Sports F1 which, as a dedicated Formula One channel, had the perfect audience to introduce viewers to the show. The new channel had a reach of 9.4m in its first season, with around 14m live streams on Sky Go, where Tooned was made available after broadcast.

Social media was also used to attract viewers – it was a big part of McLaren’s established social media output, while interest in the show became so high that @SkySportsF1 would tweet each episode’s air time in advance. Tooned also had a dedicated video section on Skysports.com.

An indication of Tooned’s quality comes in the way Sky treated it as premium content, offering it via their on demand service and using its Twitter accounts to let followers know when the show was coming up on Sky Sports – recognising that even though it was branded, it was content that its audience did not want to miss. It was even given its own video section on Sky Sports’ site, and it is testament to the draw of the show that Sky placed advertising before each episode.

After broadcast Tooned took on another life online, springing up on F1 websites, fan blogs and of course YouTube, where it has received more than 2m views across the series so far. Tooned was the UK’s top trend on Twitter in the build up to the Belgian Grand Prix, more talked about than even McLaren itself!

The McLaren eStore has a dedicated Tooned section selling everything from T-shirts and stickers to the DVD of the first series, which launched in December following the final race (and episode) of the season. In just two months it sold more than 15,000 units and it was its distributor’s top performing children’s title over the Christmas period.