In Finland the law on brand visibility inside a tv show is very strict. It states that you have to separate the tv-show from advertising by commercial break signage and brands can't affect the shows plot.

On the other hand Finland is a small market of 5.3 million people and there aren't too many brands who have the resources to produce a high quality branded content for TV. Currently most branded content ideas are distributed online. To tackle this, we developed a branded content platform where ten brands could join as one of the characters in a high quality sitcom. Brands bought an equal priced media package, which included an active role in one episode and planning & execution of an integrated media campaign (TVC, radio, online, Social Media).

Brändärit was launched in August 2014 with PR-event, TV-trailers and a radio campaign. After the launch, each episode was then also specifically supported with trailers in TV and radio.

In addition, the ten participating brands promoted their own episodes in their owned media (social media, POS, print etc.) giving the show an extra push. Combined, the ten participating brands have 1.3million Facebook-fans which is one third of the Finnish population.

To mix fact and fiction even more, we created a website for the fictional ad agency (http://www.mainostoimistohuutomerkki.fi/en.html) and social media channel (FB, Twitter), hosted by the ad agency´s "socialmedia manager".

We got ten famous brands to play a role in the episodes and because they were part of the story, the brands were open to create crazy campaigns. Something they´d never have done without the show. MTV3, the biggest commercial broadcaster in the Finland gave us their crown jewel slot – Sunday night prime time 9pm.

We exceeded our ratings objectives already in the second week by +30% (330 000 viewers), making Brändärit the 4th biggest scripted show on commercial television. On average the show had 312 000 viewers. Combined, over 1.6 million Finns watched the show, which means that more than every third Finn has seen Brändärit (source: Finnpanel).

Instead of low awareness, the commercials made news and tabloids, and were the topic of conversation nationwide and even in Germany. The average awareness of the TVCs made in the show was 51% (+10% vs. total average) and among the people who watched the show 74%! This proved that this unique branded content platform was an effective tool to get brands messages through.

Buy This! tv-format (based on Brändärit) will be aired on several markets in 2016 and more markets will follow.