Rescue Blue makes the global top 10 of best performing ads in 2018

On the top 10 of best performing ads - globally

Every year, millions of ads are displayed on YouTube. In collaboration with The Webby Awards, YouTube nominates the best performing ads globally every year. In 2018, LEGO proved once again that it can compete with the biggest global brands when it comes to engaging advertising content, as the brand made the list of the top 10 best performing ads on YouTube. Alongside Nike’s “Dream Crazy” with sports icon Colin Kaepernick and Amazon's Superbowl ad for Alexa, you'll find Rescue Blue, an ad we created for a LEGO Jurassic World product launch. Having worked with LEGO for over 42 years with over 100 product launches, this makes us very proud.

Client Service Director and Partner, Jeppe Fonnesbæk, talks about the process: “Earlier this year we were asked to help launch the new LEGO Jurassic World assortment linked to the new Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom film. It was a very close collaboration with LEGO as the major challenge was the tight timing. We had to develop and produce the campaign in a short space of time and, at the same time, try to link it to a film we would only be able to see after the campaign had launched”. 

You decide the story

Rescue Blue was built up with a “Choose your own adventure” creative narrative flow. This took the user on a journey through several videos, each of which ended by asking them to decide how the story should continue to save the velociraptor, Blue, from the impending danger of an erupting volcano. This meant that the users became active participants in the storytelling rather than passive recipients of content.

Long-term leader

“Our ambition was to create an engaging experience for the target audience that took into account how YouTube algorithms prioritise content. The result was a series of interlinked videos making a coherent experience where the audience was asked to choose how to help the key character Owen save Blue”, explains Rune Seir, Digital Experience Manager at Advance.

In addition to creating a positive experience for the user, this behaviour plays very well with YouTube’s indexing algorithms because of the longer sessions it encourages. One look at YouTube's leaderboard can confirm this fact! Besides making it onto the Year-end leaderboard, the video series appeared on YouTube’s Ads Leaderboard for two months in a row. According to Google representatives, this is extremely rare and especially notable because the leaderboard has an algorithm that measures "organic views, watch time and audience retention", which means it highlights content based on consumer interaction and disregards spend.

A Strong Product Launch

In August 2018, the first of the videos rounded 10 million views on YouTube after only three months (US/UK version). While the first video was seen as an entry into the story flow, the full story was shared by users on their own accounts on both YouTube and Instagram. One Spanish version received over 8 million views on YouTube. Additionally, the ‘pick-your-path’ format and end card path kept viewers engaged for longer and created algorithmically favourable watch sessions that drove above-average viewer retention. Overall, the positive user reception of Rescue Blue actively contributed to the strong launch of the new product line. In addition, it resulted in the immediate request for a follow-up to be launched in the fall of 2018.

View the full list of ads on YouTube’s Global Year-End 2018 Ads Leaderboard, read more about our general work for LEGO, or read the full Rescue Blue case story.