Branded entertainment is booming in the UK, in particular online video content marketing. According to E-Consultancy “90% of marketers and agencies believe it will become more important in the next 12 months”. For branded entertainment to work to its best potential it needs to inspire consumers to share so the content gets distributed organically. Brand entertainment is becoming more about signifying your purpose, demonstrating your character and being useful in some way. Successful companies like Burberry and Red Bull are putting branded entertainment at the heart of their marketing strategy. A report conducted by Edelman, which surveyed consumers in the UK found that the overall perception of brand value through the entertainment industry has risen to the highest level in three years. This further supports the growing importance of brand entertainment marketing. Over half of UK consumers (54%) watch this content on their laptops, while 10% use tablets for this purpose. Last year, just 34% said the same. 40% of the survey respondents see social platforms (particularly Facebook and twitter) as a great platform to view brand entertainment content vs. any other online source. Our task was to tap into this trend by producing a memorable and sharable piece of video content on a very small budget.

After some initial seeding in Social Media and on YouTube, and with a little help from Press Releases by Mazda the Mazda2 vs The Wall of Death films soon gained traction. Being featured on key motoring websites, such as TopGear, Jalopnik, Autoblog and the Telegraph, picked up by trend-watching sites such as CoolHunting and It’s Nice That and having the science of the stunt analysed by WIRED generated a huge amount of social chatter and led to many thousands of views across the world. Comments were overwhelmingly positive, with one word being particularly popular with commentators– “Awesome”

The objective was to create a film that went viral and one week after launch the films had cumulative views of over half a million, so by that measure alone it was a resounding success.

The clients were overjoyed. Mazda Australia said it was “Absolutely brilliant”. Mazda UK added: “An amazing response, a social winner” and Mazda Canada chipped in “These are amazing”.

A hugely positive attitude towards Mazda amongst the press and public audience was also evident. Autoblog said: “We knew the Mazda2 was nimble, but this is pretty sweet”, Top Gear said: “All in all, the Mazda2's not half bad. It's reasonably priced. The iPod lead's really easy to find. Oh, and it appears to be able to DRIVE ON WALLS.”

One commenter (scrye34) on YouTube said: “Crazy,_this is why I love Mazdas.” Another (CHARLIETWW) added: “This is really cool. This surely makes people interested in this car.”

Now with more than 1.1 million views Mazda2 vs The Wall of Death has proved to be the most successful piece of branded entertainment produced for Mazda.