With a few notable exceptions, most Branded Entertainment to date in Australia has been web based content or straight up product placement – not entertainment developed around a brand strategy.In 2010, the 4 Australian free to air commercial networks – 7,9,10 and SBS, all added digital channels, vastly increasing the amount of advertiser supported programming available to consumers. There are now 16 free to air channels in a market of 22m people.The free-to-air networks consider a show successful if it pulls over a million viewers an hour. Their digital channels need about 300,000 viewers to win a timeslot, and cable can range from 15,000 for non-sports shows up to 150-300,000 for blockbuster event shows.Australians have always been early technology adopters. The fractured media landscape and challenges of pitching brand-funded shows to the networks has pushed advertisers to the internet as a viable cost per eyeball way to measure return on investment for branded entertainment. As advertisers move from a model (where they supply a car as a consumer promotion on a game show) into branded shows (where the channel, story, character or situations are built around a brand’s agenda) there is tremendous scope for long-form storytelling.

Audiences were drawn to The Great Crusade across 4 central pillars. A social network based around TGC website, and then through in-flight screenings on Qantas, after which the weekly clips were uploaded to TGC website. The videos were so popular that the segment started appearing as part of the New Zealand television show ‘The Crowd Goes Wild’, and ultimately led the producers to write in a segment for Toby to appear live on the show, mixing the on-line and broadcast components of the story.

Nielsen Research showed: a) 70% of people exposed to The Great Crusade were more interested in booking a trip to New Zealand (in the next 12 months), and b) Qantas were the most recognised ‘sponsors’ of the Rugby World Cup, despite not actually being one.Over 100 people got to live the experience of a lifetime touring around New Zealand experiencing the best it has to offer and attending all of the Wallabies matches. Over 20m people followed them and TGC across various content platforms.The Great Crusade content received an Emmy nomination in the Digital Fiction category