The US’s collegiate athletics governing body, the NCAA, puts a critical eye on all matters concerning armature & scholastic sport; ensuring they are never perceived, compensated or treated as professionals prior to entering college. If they are, the NCAA strips them of all eligibility, restricting them from ever participating in collegiate athletics due to any said violations. Thus, all filming revolved around the teams pre-set practice schedule, creating fast turnaround times for final content produced in order to be in market during high relevancy time frames. In addition, no athlete could be directly compensated for their involvement. Only the high school received a small donation.

The audience was drawn to the content through a digital media buy across multiple networks (Sharethrough, STACK Media, YuMe) and YouTube ad buys that targeted 12-24 year old men and women, sports enthusiasts (football & fall sport focused). Paid influencing tweets from professional athletes like Larry Fitzgerald, Greg Jennings, Steven Jackson, Devin Hester and Ray Rice also helped drive traffic to each video of the series. Facebook was the hub for the pre-promotional phase of the campaign where teasers and exclusive content was leveraged to view the series on YouTube.

The branded content for Hell Week was part of a larger DICK’S Sporting Goods “Untouchable” campaign which positions the store at the epicenter of mind, body and equipment for True Athletes. The purpose of Hell Week as branded content was to help sow DSG into sport culture as a store that understands the mindset of athletes. As such, total views and reach were the primary metrics for success for the series.

In totality, Hell Week reached a massive audience with 14,605,271 impressions. Almost half of the total impressions came from unaided consumer generated tweets, with 834 in total.

At the onset of the project, both the agency and DICK’S Sporting Goods created the goal of 1m views. The series exceeded expectations and received over 1.5m views during the thirty-day promotion.

While not a primary metric, subscribers to the DSG YouTube page increased by 61.9% and came directly from views on the Channel.