TV in the UK remains one of the most highly-regulated advertising markets in the world.

Product placement on TV remains off limits for many brands and for those that can, screen time is limited by a requirement to only appear when editorially justified. This over-regulation, combined with broadcasters’ protracted processes for commissioning programmes results in very few pieces of quality branded content being transmitted on TV.

In short, to achieve any sort of branded content on television is a monumental task for any brand to undertake.

That’s why for Warner Bros, we approached the problem from a different angle.

TV was still the perfect medium, but we looked to the ad-break rather than the programming to create a Branded Content event.

We collaborated with a number of other brands to ‘LEGO-fy’ their ADVERTISING in the run up to the launch of The LEGO Movie, giving each brand an association with the hottest movie release of the year-to-date and, in turn, making four well-known ads promotions for the movie.

All of this rolled up into a piece of content in its own right - a 3½ minute break entirely made of LEGO.

To hit its UK box office targets, The LEGO Movie needed to get adults who could easily dismiss it a ‘kids film about toys’ to go and see it.

We did this by creating a moment of television which would rekindle childhood memories of the magic of the brand and unlock their inner child by joyously turning part of their recognisably ‘grown-up’ world into LEGO.

So, for a movie in which the whole world is made of LEGO, we replicated that experience for viewers of the UK’s most-watched weekend family TV show, Dancing on Ice, and rebuilt a ‘normal’ ad break - brick by brick – in LEGO, surprising and delighting both adults and kids at the same time.

It was an epic and unprecedented idea.

By collaborating with four brands to ‘LEGO-fy’ their ADVERTISING in the run up to the launch of The LEGO Movie, each gained a brand association with the hottest movie release of the year-to-date and, in turn, four well-known ads became promotions for the movie.

All of this rolled up into a 3½ minute piece of LEGO Movie branded content to promote its launch in its own right.

The four LEGO-friendly brands who had their ads remade were the British Heart Foundation (BHF), British Telecom (BT), Confused.com (an insurance aggregator) and Premier Inn hotels.

To cement association with the movie, we ended the break with a trailer for the film.

(N.B. Such was the appeal of this unprecedented idea that these four brands paid their own production and media costs to ensure they could be part of it. Warner Bros. did not pay for anything other than their own media costs)

We unveiled the story of the break 3-days before its transmission (which was 7:28pm on Sunday, 9/2/14). Interest was phenomenal, with coverage ranging from national tabloids to the Financial Times. Social media went nuts too, with hundreds exclaiming that “this is the only ad break I’d CHOOSE to watch”.

We knew that the TV transmission would create lots of “Did you see that?” chatter online so in parallel, we simultaneously uploaded the break to Warner Bros.’ YouTube channel, monitoring reactions and linking people who had expressed regret at missing it to YouTube so they could immediately join the conversation.

Six million people saw the LEGO event on TV, and social media went into meltdown, leading to an additional 1million+ seeking it out on YouTube.

Post-launch tracking indicated that the ad break influenced an incremental 5% of opening week box office revenue, resulting in a Return on Marketing Investment of £5.96 for every £1 Warner Bros. spent .

Finally, the 3½ minute break was independently tested by market research company YouGov, who described it as the best performing ad break they’ve ever measured – aggregating the ads into a piece of ‘LEGO-tainment’ made the break 14% more enjoyable than an identical break featuring the original ads.

Our epic undertaking had delivered epic results and to paraphrase the movie’s lead character Emmet, “Everything was awesome”.