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Big Branded Call Case Study: CHOOSE U
- Julia Campbell
- 8 minutes ago
- 2 min read
On a recent Big Branded Call, Michel Pelletier, director of strategic partnerships, News is Out, shared a fantastic case study with our media teams showing the power of trust, collaboration and branded content!
This campaign was intentionally built around the idea that in a highly regulated category like HIV, credibility must come before scale. Rather than treating the initiative as a media buy, the strategy centered on placing lived-experience storytelling inside trusted LGBTQ+ news environments where the audience already has an established relationship. The foundation was simple: if the environment is trusted, the message performs more efficiently across every channel layered on top of it.
From there, the campaign was structured as a coordinated, multi-market activation — not isolated placements. Each channel had a defined strategic role: print established credibility, branded editorial built trust, the national live stream delivered scale and engagement, paid social accelerated amplification, and newsletters reinforced intent. This deliberate channel architecture ensured that performance compounded rather than fragmented.
Most importantly, the strategy prioritized repetition and durability over a single tentpole spike. By layering print, editorial, live distribution, social amplification, and newsletter reinforcement across markets, the campaign created sustained exposure. The result was not just reach, but measurable engagement — proving that community-rooted coordination can drive scalable impact in complex categories.
“We didn’t build a media plan — we built a coordinated trust engine. That’s what made the performance scalable," Michel Pelletier, director of strategic partnerships, News is Out.
To view the full deck, click below!
The Branded Content Project is designed through a strategic partnership between the Local Media Association and the Local Media Consortium, with funding from the Knight Foundation, to help facilitate additional growth, engagement, and revenue success for more publishers of all shapes and sizes.