The challenge Branded Entertainment has in the U.S. is that it has to compete with pure entertainment. And consumers’ standards are high, especially with the plethora of English-speaking video content on YouTube, Netflix, and cable TV. Plus, more brands than ever are creating branded entertainment and consumers are more cynical than ever about being marketed to.

If a brand is creating the entertainment, standard Federal Trade Commission guidelines apply. All work needs to be reviewed by corporate legal teams and include the necessary trademarks and legal language or the company risks legal action or backlash by consumers.

In 2013, we turned our customers’ love-fueled tweets and posts about Wendy’s new Pretzel Bacon Cheeseburger into love song lyrics sung by former boy band star, Nick Lachey.

The social campaign helped the sandwich become the brand’s most successful product launch ever. But it was only available for a limited time. Leaving fans heartbroken. Some, even claiming to not eat at Wendy’s again until it returned.

The challenge was to generate even more awareness and sales for the product’s 2014 comeback. So, leveraging our existing equity, we employed a similar strategy. But this time, we used their love-sick tweets and posts to compose and produce an original, full -length song and music video from R&B legends, Boyz II Men.

We curated the best social media comments from our Facebook and Twitter platforms and turned them into love song lyrics, scored an original song, and had Boyz II Men lay down the sweet vocals.

The day the Boyz II Men video launched, MTV and Forbes declared that Wendy’s had won the internet. And demand for the song even earned it legitimate placement on Spotify.

Ultimately, the social media outpouring, and of course sales, convinced Wendy’s to keep the Pretzel Bacon Cheeseburger on the menu. Forever.

The audience was captivated, wanting to see if their social media comments were being sung as a love song, by R&B legends.

We also made sure they saw it by placing it in their Facebook news feeds. We worked closely with the social media platform to find consumers who were likely to find the videos compelling and share them.

The videos showed up alongside messages from our consumer’s friends with copy that invited engagement. We also ensured the branded content reached our target audience through Twitter. Boyz II Men also sent out the videos to their fans, as did Wendy’s.

• 431+ million paid media impressions

• 88+ million unique paid media impressions

• 5 million social engagements

• 7.2+ million video views

In this music video, R&B legends, Boyz II Men, sang an original song that we composed and produced using our customers’ love-fueled tweets and posts about the Wendy’s Pretzel Bacon Cheeseburger as the lyrics. It was entertaining, long-form content, branded by Wendy’s.