HSBC is on a mission to grow rugby sevens, especially in the United States where few care about rugby at all.

We turned HSBC from sponsors to storytellers to reach fans and non-fans alike. We researched, scripted, produced and published an ambitious 2-part feature length documentary - ‘The Pioneers’ -- about the USA Sevens. It was broadcast in primetime by NBC at no cost to HSBC and has achieved more than 1.8m views on social media, helping HSBC reach new Sevens fans worldwide and growing the sport in the US.

It’s one thing to create content about rugby sevens. It’s quite another to focus on the virtually unknown US team and promoting it in the US market, where rugby isn’t even cared enough about to dislike it. To make the completely unknown into something universally entertaining, we decided to transform the US sevens into heroes – the Pioneers of Sport – by making a two-part documentary about their lives.

We knew just creating a documentary wasn’t enough to mythologize the US sevens as Pioneers. We needed to get Pioneers on the right channels to reach new fans in the US, to turn the documentary – and in turn the Pioneers themselves – into a story that transcended rugby’s audience. We negotiated a free exclusive broadcast agreement with NBC and ensured the full film was available to all through social media, distributed through rugby and key influencer channels.

With every client brief, there is temptation to take the easy option. For a sponsorship campaign, that usually means pitch-side branding, high-priced ambassadors and 10-second highlight reels.

But that wouldn’t achieve our goal of demonstrating what HSBC stands for to new wider audiences. Particularly as many people are far from receptive to communication by financial institutions. So we threw the traditional sponsor activity rule-book out the window and went bigger, better and way more ambitious. Embedding a crew for almost a year to create a branded film of outstanding quality (matching the quality of the biggest online publishers) with budget coming in far below that of many traditional advertising TVCs, we filmed the right moments and put them together in a way that meant audiences could not look away (reflected in the performance on social media). It brought HSBC’s brand values to life to keep and key viewers coming back.

Having commissioned and storyboarded the film we ensured our crew had full access to the team at the key moments as they travelled around the world, capturing every emotive, exciting moment.

The two-part documentary was launched across HSBC social channels with a full publishing roll-out, including official film posters, HSBC social channel branding and multiple teasers.

Simultaneously NBC aired the documentary on primetime for free: a rarity for a 22.5-minute piece of branded content. We also negotiated two free 30-second HSBC adverts during the broadcast.

We enrolled media and influencers to highlight HSBC’s role in supporting rugby’s growth. We generated earned media (78 pieces) on the upcoming film release, including interviews with the USA players and coaches driving to the film as well as including a 9-minute broadcast interview with BBC World.

• The Pioneers has 1.8 million views, 2 million+ impressions and over 12 million opportunities to see across social media.

• NBC aired it on primetime and then subsequent ‘encore’ presentations including on the Olympic Channel.

• The average YouTube view duration of Part One is 44% (9:53), high for longform and 637% longer than the HSBC global channel average. Part Two performed similarly with an average view duration of 28%, longer than the HSBC’s average by 282%.

• It stimulated 7,464 engagements, more than 1,000 comments, and 17,719 likes.

• The Pioneers earned 78 articles, including The Guardian, ESPN and the Mail Online. All contained HSBC key messaging and 75% had positive sentiment towards the bank.

• BBC World ran a 9-minute broadcast promoting the documentary.

• Rugby is now the fastest growing sport in the US. The USA are leading this year’s HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series.