With product placement in TV and movies becoming all-pervasive, and audiences becoming more skeptical toward them, finding new and more affordable ways into the branded-entertainment space is crucial. In the case of Farmers’ Love Float, we wanted to make the most of one of the more traditional avenues of corporate sponsorship. With the Farmers Insurance 54th entry into the Rose Parade, we challenged ourselves to maximize the reach with as much pre-parade and day-of social engagement and press coverage as possible.

When this year’s parade theme (“Oh, the Places You’ll Go”) aligned so perfectly with our internal strategy (“Farmers helps you plan for life’s big moments”) we thought, “Why don’t we throw a live wedding on the float?” Let’s turn this old-fashioned tradition into a modern fairytale. We’ll let our Facebook community choose the couple and help with all the wedding planning. Then we’ll let the preparations, pageantry and press coverage take on a life of their own.

Parade floats are the original rolling billboards. And for 54 years, Farmers Insurance has had a presence in the legendary Rose Parade. But this year we wanted to do something a little different. Farmers helps people plan for life’s big moments. So we decided to turn one of those moments into a fairy tale—by turning their float into a live wedding extravaganza.

Thousands on Facebook became our wedding planners, helping not only choose the couple, but the dress, cake, tux and more. More than 50 million people watching live at home and along the parade route became our witnesses. Through Instagram, Flickr and Twitter, thousands more became our wedding photographers and toast makers.

With the continuous press coverage throughout the entire process, Farmers got $5 million in additional PR. And one lucky couple got their storybook moment.

Who doesn’t love a wedding? The 586 media outlets picked up the story—including all major network news and morning shows (Today, GMA), local and cable news outlets (CNN, Univision, Fox), print publications (Los Angeles Times, USA Today) and digital darlings (Huffington Post, Yahoo!) In a few short weeks, the story tallied over 516,000,000 impressions estimated at $5,117,556 worth of PR value.

We mobilized millions to become our wedding planners, photographers and toast-makers. The contest and subsequent wedding planning reached 6.3m users through social media. The 18 videos created throughout the process received almost 200,000 minutes of branded engagement. The couple received 2,600 Twitter toasts. And 600 photos of the ceremony appeared on Instagram, Flickr and Facebook. In total, the Dream Wedding site received more than 200,000 page views.

In the end, how much did all this move the needle? Farmers boasted 35% higher brand recall than the parade naming-rights sponsor. People who recalled the float were 116% more likely to consider and 40% more likely to recommend Farmers. And as far as hard numbers go, Farmers captured 2,114 new customer leads onsite and online directly attributable to the one and only Love Float.