Universal Resorts was looking to reach MTV audiences and show off the highlights of their ever expanding resorts without creating content that felt like an explicit advertisement.   We developed a strategy that gave Universal Resorts the chance to do just that by designing a mini episode of MTV's The Challenge that would take place in the Theme Park and then air in a full commercial pod (4 minutes) during the finale episode of The Challenge.  The experience for the viewer was seamless from the current finale into the special event and then back into the finale.  We were able to show off the Resort and Theme Park all while keeping viewers hooked with exciting content from their favorite contestants on The Challenge.  We also created an extended version of the Universal Challenge that lived online, linear promos, social content and an interactive chat bot that fans could message making it a fully immersive 360 campaign.

​

It was so successful in it's first year that Universal has returned every year since to create an updated version.  For the third installment in 2019 the digital version once again went viral with fans flocking to MTV.com to catch all the excitement from the Universal Challenge. The digital web content drew 276.6k watch minutes, outperforming the season average by 45%. All social content/promotion resulted in over 23M social impressions, 6.4M social views (outperforming view rate benchmarks), and nearly 200k engagements.