Increasingly in Europe, it’s fair to describe almost everything as branded content – if our definition of branded content is “entertaining and engaging content for an audience”. The best marketing in Europe today is created to first make people laugh, think, even cry; and through these emotions, to draw people to one brand, or product, over another. Product integration is becoming more organic and natural; product messaging less clunky; and branding less in-your-face; so that increasingly, even traditional paid-for advertising campaigns resemble branded entertainment. So to describe the current situation around branded entertainment in our region in a word: competitive.

Set in the back alleys of Marseille, it is the first ever Street View at night. Hundreds of high-definition photospheres allow users to take an audio tour with a local guide, or explore the streets and stories of the neighbourhood on their own.

Designed as a mobile first experience, users can intuitively navigate an urban street art safari using the gyroscopes of mobile devices.

Along the way, Google Now cards are integrated to share contextually relevant knowledge, and when users come across places of interest, Google Places API suggests similar locations to check out in their own cities.

During the first four weeks after launch, we saw over a million visitors taking a walk through the back-streets of Marseille, spending over 2.5 minutes with the experience, exceeding benchmarks. The current industry average expects a 50% bounce rate, however, Nightwalk exceeded expectations and had an impressive bounce rate of less than 15%.

The response to the campaign was overwhelmingly positive, striking a cultural chord with fans all over the world via influential press sources like The Verge, Engadget, Konbini and BuzzFeed, etc. The latter actually called the experience “The best use of Google maps yet.” PR efforts generated close to 88 million potential impressions, with the campaign gracing the front page of national French newspapers, online sites, radio and national television - there was great public support for Google telling the story of Marseille (a national treasure often overlooked). When it came to social media and activating the campaign across Google’s global pages, our Twitter campaign was the most effective for Google EMEA to date, with topic trending in France during the launch weekend - with social efforts generating over 40 million social impressions.