As a product of Prince George's County, Maryland and the biggest success story in recent years, we highlighted how Hometown Hero, Kevin Durant, inspired James and his mother from within their community to dream fearlessly.
The objective was to generate high social engagement in the form of video views, and brand awareness. In addition, AFI sought to strengthen our association with brand ambassador Kevin Durant as a Champion of Dreams. AFI published various lengths of the Hometown Hero video in social media to both encourage views in social channels and generate interest in viewing the long form video on www.dreamfearlessly.com. Additionally, the video was used in a Twitter Moment leading up to and during a marquee NBA matchup between the Golden State Warriors and Kevin's former team, the Oklahoma City Thunder, on Nov. 3, 2016.
Based on internal and external research we developed various socially-optimized lengths of the Hometown Hero video to run in Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram from 8/29 – 10/25. Promotion was optimized to higher performing videos that drove view views and traffic to www.dreamfearlessly.com where users could watch the full length Hometown Hero film, fostering deeper engagement with our brand. Based on the success of this story we resurfaced the videos to run in Twitter during key NBA matchups when Kevin Durant was playing to take advantage of a two screen approach. Additionally, we produced a Twitter Moment to run during the Nov. 3 NBA matchup of the Golden State Warriors and Kevin's former team, the Oklahoma Thunder. The full length film also aired during key matchups on TNT and ESPN, and was shared to TNT's social channels. Other media partners used Hometown Hero as pre-roll and within native video units.
70% Video Completion Rate (VCR) in digital media, above AFI benchmark of 66%.
1.7MM video views in Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Exceeded VCR benchmark in both Facebook and Twitter. Facebook 7.28% (3.42% benchmark); Twitter 4.86% (2.37% benchmark)
"Because of Them We Can" posted the long-form version to Facebook on 10/26. In a little over 2 weeks, it reached 7.4MM people with 5.1MM views, 81K likes, 27K shares and 3,000 comments. Comments not only reinforced the positive nature of the work but also associated it with the American Family Insurance brand. Link to Facebook post
