Despite becoming more prevalent in recent years, branded entertainment is still a small fraction of the overall marketing mix for most brands in the US.

While much has been written about the recent success of Red Bull, Dove Moisturizer and Chipotle in these realms, the fact is that Macy’s branded entertainment work pre-dates the efforts of all of these brands.

The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is one of the highest-rated telecasts on US television, and an American Thanksgiving tradition for over 85 years. The iconic brand also produces the annual Macy’s 4th of July Fireworks Spectacular, which airs yearly on NBC, and the animated holiday TV special 'Yes, Virginia', now in its fifth season on CBS. For the past 2 years, Macy’s 'Yes Virginia The Musical' program has allowed over 2,000 schools around the country to stage productions of this royalty-free play.

The focus of this entry is 'No Small Parts', an inspiring short documentary film that we produced, about the journey of one school’s students and teachers, and how their community came together to stage their first musical.

We set up a real-time response unit, creating an interactive parade experience through social media for viewers at home. By connecting with PR representatives in the lead up to the event we were able to facilitate hundreds of conversations with float ‘stars’ like Goldfish, Jones brothers, Duck Dynasty, Jimmy Fallon, Snoopy, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Buzz Lightyear and brought together the logistics to make it happen on the fly. The social command center was a huge success for Macy’s and has become the gold standard for Macy’s live events social amplification strategy for years to come.

In the end we created over 100 pieces of content (videos, photos, blogs) that were published to nearly 14.5 million Macy’s fans across various social media platforms. #HelpMeClinton received around 30 million unique impressions and had nearly one million engaged users across all channels.