Entertainment > Audiovisual Branded Content

CROSSING CONTINENTS

VCCP, London / CANON / 2019

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Overview

Credits

OVERVIEW

Why is this work relevant for Entertainment?

In 2018 Canon wanted to appeal to a younger, more adventurous consumer so we put their new ‘Live for the story’ positioning into action - no actors or ad construct, but real people and real stories.

We worked closely with world renowned parkour group Storror to bring their ultimate story, and a world first, to life - ‘Crossing Continents, from Europe to Asia by parkour.’

They freeran across moving obstacles , filming it all themselves using Canon equipment. It achieved over 10M organic views, 530k website visits, 56% increase in sales and YouTube’s most favourable film in the tech category.

Background

In 2018 there were more images taken than ever before, yet the camera market was in decline. There were 84% less camera shipments in 2018 that the industry’s peak in 2010.

The big camera brands were battling for a new, younger consumer, who will try their hand at lots of interests; anything from surfing to pottery, beer making, filmmaking and photography.

They’re young, ambitious and look up the new world of YouTube creators for inspiration, hoping to emulate them and use the kit they do.

The majority of these new consumers are aware of Canon but don’t yet see them as

relevant to their life. We set out to bring 300,000 of this notoriously hard to reach

audience into the camera market and also double our market share for entry level

cameras.

Describe the creative idea

Our creative team challenged 40 of the world's most inspiring creators to tell us their ultimate story - the one thing they want to do but haven’t had the chance yet. The best story came back from a group of world famous YouTubers and parkour athletes, Storror, who were approaching 1m followers.

We worked with them to develop ‘Crossing Continents - from Europe to Asia by parkour’, a feat they could only achieve freerunning across Istanbul, the one city that straddles both continents. It also required them to freerun over moving obstacles - from boats and trains, to shipping containers and even people.

We gave over control, allowing them to plan, direct, shoot, perform and edit our films, all with Canon’s latest kit and a full production team. They ensured that, whilst the film remained in Storror’s distinctive style, it was visually like nothing they’d been able to create before.

Describe the strategy

We’d launched the new brand positioning ‘Live for the story’ in 2017.

2018 became about putting our new storytelling positioning into action for this new audience and demonstrating Canon’s role in telling great stories.

Using an ad construct featuring actors and placing it on broadcast channels wouldn’t have made us any more relevant. We needed to:

- Find real people to embody our attitude

- Use them to access this elusive group of ‘adventurous achievers’

- Develop an idea which would blow their minds

- Show the role our kit and their unique features played in capturing the story

We’d used the stunt to draw consumers in, then show behind the scenes edits and shorter product feature films to demonstrate the role of Canon cameras.

Describe the execution

The campaign lived on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, partner websites and DOOH sites from June till August 2018. It was designed to take the audience from general Canon awareness to favouring the brand and considering a camera.

Storror posted our 3 films on their YouTube channel consecutive Mondays, to drive awareness and entertain their followers:

1. Crossing continents - the challenge

2. Crossing continents - behind the scenes

3. Boat jump fail, a behind the scenes look at a failed stunt

They also posted over 100 Instagram posts and stories teasing the content..

We amplified these with shorter YouTube Trueview films, Instagram stories, DOOH, Facebook link ads and carousels to drive favourability. These featured the stunt and Canon kit being used.

Lastly, we used 4 x 10” product films to drive consideration, highlighting the product features. They were shown to those we who had completed a view of the other content.

Describe the outcome

Overall our campaign went far beyond our targets:

- Over 10.3 million organic views

- Mostly younger viewers (72.4% were 18-35)

- 98% positive sentiment

- Over 31.2 million paid views and 17.9 million completed views (57%)

- 9.1% lift in brand favourability (Best in Tech Category)

- Over 540K website visits

- +56% year on year sales increase of the 4000D entry level model

And Storror got to make their ultimate story, helping increase their followers from 1 million to 3.9 million.

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