Welcome to Cascadia, a breathtaking GoPro original production (the largest EMEA media and athlete project in the history of the brand), showcasing Scottish trial cycling legend Danny MacAskill's spectacular riding where no one has ridden before – across the rooftops of picturesque Gran Canaria in Spain.
The objective was to create one of the most radical, vertigo-inducing videos ever made, champion the insane talent of one of the most beloved action sports athletes in the world and celebrate the unique POV that only GoPro can capture.
We knew that this story would blow the minds of our 20 million strong social audience who have sometimes "seen it all." In order to drive video views, maximize conversation and increase brand awareness during a key moment in time (holiday 2015), we approached the video release with "social-first" in mind. The goal was to have an artfully balanced release schedule so that we were always top of mind, avoiding dips in conversation.
We wanted to surprise and delight our audience through a social touch point every single day. From community engagement to unique video edits across our global and international social channels, Danny Mac's Cascadia was one of the video highlights of the year and to-date has over 13 million total social views.
The release of Cascadia was anchored with marketing touch points that laddered up to our objectives of driving video views, trigging engagement and sparking conversation.
Most impressive was the role that MacAskill played in production. He edited 80% of the video and was a critical producer and key visionary in bringing it to life. This collaboration proved to be a best in class example of a true brand + athlete partnership, we like to think of it as our GoPro special sauce.
The production lended itself easily to a variety of social media assets including a full length feature YouTube video, Vines, a spherical video, blog, Facebook Q&A, Instagram photo, 15 second teaser and a 2 behind-the-scenes edits.
Rather than tease the feature edit with short clips prior to launch, we went big and dropped the full length video on the world. We wanted the video to be in the Facebook News Feed first thing in the morning (CET), with a goal of keeping it top of mind over the next 24 hours. Timing was key due to the international release and Danny being located in Europe. Synergies across global and local channels were key. We diversified content to ensure a positive and fresh viewing experience for fans all over the world.
Immediately following the launch post, we hosted a Facebook Q&A with Danny reaching over 215K people and triggering 6k+ engagements. Later that day, a 15 second trailer was shared on Twitter and Google+ (a key player in our SEO strategy) to reignite the conversation and drive viewers back to the full length video.
Behind-the-scenes content drove further education around the impressive production and gave our audience as taste of what it's like to be on set with GoPro. After immersing themselves in the BTS clips, they couldn't help but click back to re-watch the full-length edit.
The momentum was contagious.
A photo from the production of Cascadia was shared as Photo of the Day on all social channels driving over 900k total engagements. The drumbeat continued with 3 Vines that looped at climactic moments (318,477 total loops, 882 re-vines) and swapped out cover photos on Facebook and Twitter for prime real estate.
The goal was to use mixed media to keep awareness high and ultimately drive video views.
As social chatter began to slow, we dropped the next beauty: an insane spherical edit on YouTube driving nearly 200k views (Jan 2016).
Within hours of its release, Cascadia was trending on Facebook and Twitter.
We saw more than 1M views on the first day, making it one of the most successful videos over a 24 hours span in the HISTORY of GoPro. Day 1 mentions were through the roof. We saw 15k mentions of GoPro in just under 24 hours.
After only 5 days we accumulated 7M views and over 300k social engagements. We worked with our friends at Red Bull to amplify the message, their social support driving 1.4M views and 140k likes, comments and shares.
Media relations kept energy high with 260M impressions at launch and the video was featured on some the biggest TV channels around the globe.
