During the NBA Playoffs, one thing stands out as the true crowd-pleaser: dunks.

Nothing gets more attention on social media, and this year Verizon gave fans an extra reason to cheer when players dunked.

With Data Dunk, fans could draft 6 players from any team, and the more the players dunked, the more free data the fans got.

Synched with the NBA database, which categorizes dunks into 6 different types (from regular, to alley-oops and putbacks), Data Dunk was able to reward fans the moment a dunk happened.

The concept resonated with fans, who created over 55’000 teams, and took to Twitter to urge “their” players to dunk even more.

So when players in the 2016 NBA Playoffs dunked, the fans cheered, and then instantly checked their Data Dunk score. Putting Verizon at the very center of the Playoffs conversation.

The Data Dunk digital tool launched on April 20, 2016 on vzw.com/datadunk. By entering their Verizon phone number, customers could select six players from the playoff teams to form their Data Dunk team. We tapped into to the NBA’s stats API so users’ Data Dunk dashboards would update in real time during games. Over the course of the NBA playoffs, users who created a team were able to track their progress via their own custom dashboard, and most importantly, brag about out their progress on social with custom images showing their accumulated data.

A launch film featuring NBA star Draymond Green announced the program on social. Then, we drove participation via custom dunk GIFs, Twitter scratch reels, video clips, and community manager engagement in social. Digital banners & online video drove further reach. Sports and entertainment influencers, including partnered NFL players, helped spread the word in social.

The three launch pieces of content — the Draymond Green hero video on Facebook and Twitter and one dark Website Card on Twitter — garnered over 3MM impressions and 326K video views, while driving engagement rates as high as +105% above and CTR +1024% above Verizon’s benchmarks. The launch video on Facebook also drove the best completion rate to-date on video longer than 30 seconds. Launch content drove tremendous organic reach of over 1MM impressions and 24MM potential impressions coming from buzz. Additionally, the activation drove a 99% positive sentiment on the first day alone.

Within 24 hours of launch, the landing page received over 15,000 visits and the activation garnered over 2,500 participants; participation grew to over 50,000 within the first week.