Canada is a mature market when it comes to branded entertainment consumption and Canadians have readily embraced new branded entertainment platforms. Online video, in particular, has become a crucial channel when it comes to dissemination of branded content. With 92% of Canadians watching video online, Canada has the highest rates of online video consumption in the world, second only to Argentina.

Canadian marketers have been quick to leverage these habits, investing a greater portion of total ad spend into digital video than any other nation in the world. In fact, Canada leads the world in cross-device video advertising by a large margin, with 22% of impressions in 2012 going toward mobile, 24% invested in TV and 54% placed online (eMarketer, 2012).

This convergence of media, technology and brand narratives has opened great opportunities for creative marketing and has presented new avenues to exploit when it comes to delivering branded entertainment. The only notable barrier to this form of branded content in Canada comes from unionized talent costs, which apply to all branded content, whether televised or online.

• A 30s TVC was launched in May 2012 to introduce the concept of the Moosehead Journey.

• Targeted digital banners and pre-roll executions drove traffic to the Facebook video tab where video content was watchable.

• A weekly contest and Facebook social ads drove additional traffic to the page.

• A network of pay-to-play bloggers were enlisted from target-relevant websites (i.e., The Toronto Standard, BlogTO, VanCityBuzz) to support each weekly episode of the web series.

• Moosehead achieved a 6% sales lift (YOY) for months supported by in-market activity.

• The brand saw positive lifts on equity metrics associated to quality, premium segment attribution and “cool”/brand for me.

• Moosehead grew its Facebook community over 800% during the campaign; from 11,000 to 92,000 fans.

• A Facebook engagement rate of 12% was sustained throughout the campaign, compared with a standard average of 2.5% for Canadian CPG brands with relatively similar community sizes.