Fact Checkers Unit (FCU) was launched globally with a specific focus on the following territories: USA, UK, France, Germany, China, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Each region required not only different language subtitles but posed different challenges in terms of regulations, restrictions and perception. European regions take a stricter stance on the separation of advertising and entertainment. All FCU videos had to include a ‘P’ character at the beginning and end of each video with the following: “this video is brought to you by Samsung Mobile”. This intro/outro had to last for 3.5 seconds at the beginning and end of the video, which created an additional barrier-to-entry. The restriction was imposed for FCU videos on MTV’s sites but not for YouTube. The Asian and US territories, who have a longer history with branded entertainment than Europe, did not require this. In the last few years there have been a lot of scripted branded-entertainment series in the US and Asia. However, there have been far fewer in Europe and this is reflected by the public consciousness and perception of branded entertainment in Europe as being closer to advertising. This can make it harder to get press outlets to cover branded entertainment projects than in the US.

Audiences were drawn to Fact Checkers Unit (FCU) from multiple sources. FCU videos were primarily available online and on mobile via MTV’s international sites and YouTube, with supporting banners pushing people to specific show-pages on MTV.com and YouTube. A social media campaign activated both Samsung’s 7,000,000 followers and MTV’s Facebook and Twitter fan-base worldwide. The videos were posted and written about in over 200 online sites and blogs along with higher-end publications. FCU S2 also capitalized on the awareness created by Season 1 and fan-bases, with Moby and T-Pain tweeting about their participation in the series.

FCU Season 2 received over 9,000,000 global video views within 6 weeks. FCU’s audience grew from video to video putting the series at over 15,000,000 views and counting. Viewers spent an average of 4.1 minutes watching each video, resulting in a dwell time across the entire season of over 300,000 hours. Translated into traditional advertising, a 30-second spot would have to be watched half-a-billion times for a comparable dwell time. Fact Checkers Unit has been integral in helping Samsung successfully launch a revolutionary new product category that has created an entirely new market. Within just 2 months of the campaign launch, Samsung shipped over 1,000,000 Galaxy Notes with rising demand matching territories in which FCU was most popular. Traffic to Samsung.com spiked by 37% during FCU’s flight window. FCU was shared across tech, entertainment and music sites adding to already strong earned media in high-end publications. The series has been selected to play at festivals worldwide including SXSW, MIPTV, Geneva Film Festival and others. Finally Samsung have green-lit a Season 3 (which we are currently producing), starring an A-List celeb and demonstrating that FCU is a long-term branded entertainment franchise.