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.

The content was seeded through each community, offering a brief exclusive prior to the umbrella coverage of more traditional advertising. Viewers were able to engage with the content either through the recommendation of their passion network (be it skateboarding, astronomy or aviation) or via a tightly targeted media plan.

The campaign altogether reached more than 20m people through social media, leading up to over 10m views on Youtube alone. This, combined with a 82% positive sentiment score across all three markets, portrayed the somewhat lost human and inspirational side of Google. And it didn’t stop with our campaign.

Andrew Willis was invited to TED to talk about his skatepark. Lars and Isa were awarded the Golden Flood Helper Needle for the help they provided their city Halle.

Google credibly showed that it’s more than a search engine tool - it’s part of everyday life. Our evangelists got the recognition they deserved for their hard work - and our target audience got to see that they too can make a powerful impact by typing www.google.com.