After the novelty effect wore off, the audience started perceiving Branded Entertainment as just another form of advertising. The brands using these tools in the polish market do not appreciate the modern consumer, who expects the content to be relevant, of high quality and with a possibility of participation.

‚If it’s braned, it will probably be an inferior experience’. This assumption from the consumer’s perspective made our challenge even harder. To achieve an earned media reach, Zywiec had to make sure the content and experience are ownable by the brand and remarkable.

Zywiec, Heineken Group’s iconic polish beer brand, is the owner and sponsor of a concert tour, dedicated to polish music. Unique locations, the festival design and unprecedented artist collaborations make it an extraordinary experience for the polish audience.

Our goal was to reach the younger demographic and to show them the true spirit of the brand’s own music festival and the line-up. To expand Zywiec’s unique music experience beyond the borders of the physical venues.

We decided to provide a branded content platform, which would allow the consumers to actively participate in the music experience and share it. We were aware that one of the strong insights, driving engagement, is the possibility of seeing top artists sing the user’s own lyrics - an unprecedented activation. However, we also knew, that we need to create a tool with a low barrier of entry and a high pay off for both - the content creators and their audience.

We created ‚The Verse’, an interactive music video, based on the track promoting the festival. What made ‚The Verse’ absolutely unique was the possibility of creating your own lyrics and immediately seeing them sang by the top polish music artists.

To achieve a proper effect and make sure that the users’ verses sound right and make sense, we dissected the original song to find out the number of syllables, melody, pitch and tone of each word. Then we chose 3000 words to match this pattern and we recorded them with the festival artists. Fitting them into our formula, created an infinite number of possibilities.

We developed a web based application with a simple interface and live previews, which allowed easy creation and sharing of the users’ verses. In a few clicks, every user could create and share his unique version of the song.

The success of the campaign was based on the viral effect of the branded content itself. After the initial ignition of ‚The Verse’ by a social media and display campaign, the user created songs became the main media channel themselves. The unique songs, sang by the top polish stars but based on the users’ own lyrics, started appearing on social media channels: blogs, facebook, twitter, etc. Thousands of versions started popping up and it sparked the interest of media. ‚The Verse’ was quickly picked up by magazines, online portals and TV.

150 000 versions of the song were created and shared online by the users. Each version was different and unique. Nothing makes a song more personal than a user’s own lyrics. That’s why we saw and heard verses about love, rock, partying, home animals, online procastrination, cooking and politics. Sad verses, funny verses and totally absurd ones.

The simple interface joined with the instant effect of seeing my words, sang by Poland’s best, had a magnetic charm to it. ‚The Verse’ was picked up by offline and online media, who spread the idea and engaged more users. 150 000 songs shared online and the additional media coverage allowed the campaign to reach over three millions of users.

The content gained a context of it’s own. Users started using it in their personal conversations and social media comments. Why type a witty answer, when you can hear it sang by top polish artists in an energizing rock song?

The Zywiec brand succesfully reached users in the online space and achieved a massive media presence. The unprecedented interactive experience helped in making 2014 the festival’s most succesful edition to date.

‚The Verse’ is an interactive music video with custom lyrics, branded and provided by the Zywiec brand. Every user can create their own, 20 word verse for the hit music single, promoting Zywiec’s music festival and see it sang in real time by the top music artists in Poland.

Zywiec, Heineken Group’s premium beer brand, provided a platform which allowed the users to create their own unique music content and share it online. The brand provided the content: the initial track and the artists, together with a simple platform, which allowed the instant creation of unique versions of the song. In a few clicks, every user could create and share a music video, where the top artists sang the user’s own, unique lyrics.

The result: 150 000 different songs, branded by Zywiec, but distributed by the users themselves in all possible online media channels. Crowdsourced, virally spread branded content.