What if the best branded content campaign you ever produced almost never saw the light of day - not once, but three times?

On this episode of Branded Content That Works, we're breaking down how Fortune Brand Studio turned three years of rejection, a broken wind turbine, floods, and a national grid outage into an award-winning masterpiece.

Host Stine Holmgaard sits down with Megan Gilbert, Vice President of Fortune Brand Studio, and Lauren Chomiuk, Executive Director of Program Management for Fortune Brand Studio, to unpack their six-year journey with Iberdrola, a global energy company based in Spain.

Megan and Lauren share the story behind their brand film Staying Power and its accompanying content hub, including how they pitched the client for three years before winning the business, why a single mechanical failure off the coast of Massachusetts sent them scrambling to Spain, and how constant communication and deep trust turned a string of force majeure events into a campaign that overperformed Fortune's benchmarks by 3x in impressions and 14x in engagement.

This episodes was recorded in FBS's podcast studio in New York.

Produced by Pia de Soiza

Filmed by Youssef Lehnin

Edited by Jonathan Harris

Keywords:
Branded content, Fortune Brand Studio, Iberdrola, Brand film production, Energy marketing, Global branded content strategy

Appendix: https://fortune.com/brandstudio/iberdrola/how-energy-storage-is-redefining-power-on-the-iberian-peninsula/

What if the same football clips, posted the exact same way, could either flop or generate 3 million views a month? On this episode of Branded Content that Works, we're breaking down exactly what made the difference.

Host Stine Holmgaard sits down with Toni Janjiš, Head of Content Studio at Tportal, Hrvatski Telkom (Croatia's leading digital news platform and part of Deutsche Telekom Group), to unpack how a telco-owned media brand turned exclusive football rights into a thriving social media community. Toni shares the strategic thinking behind Tportal Sport's award-winning campaign, and winner of the Global Branded Content Award for Best Use of Social, including how they built platform-specific content, grew from zero to tens of thousands of followers in a year, and reached millions monthly, all without treating social media as just a distribution channel.

Keywords:
Branded content, Social media strategy, Sports marketing, Community building, Digital media (Tportal/Croatia)

Appendix:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sport.tportal.hr/?locale=hr_HR

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tportalsport/

Reference links to the Shed of Dulwich: https://www.vice.com/en/article/i-made-my-shed-the-top-rated-restaurant-on-tripadvisor/

Description:

Yvonne Beister, Director at Axel Springer Brand Studios, shares her perspective on reinventing branded content through AI-powered interactive storytelling, exploring how to push the boundaries of native advertising while staying brand-safe and editorially credible. Drawing on her extensive experience leading content and strategy across more than 20 media brands reaching 52 million Germans, she presents a detailed case study of Axel Springer's groundbreaking partnership with Samsung, outlining how they invented and launched a first-of-its-kind AI story format — and the remarkable results it delivered in engagement, dwell time, and purchase intent.

Keywords:

Branded content, AI storytelling, Interactive content, Axel Springer, Samsung, Gamification, Native Advertising

Appendix:

Samsung Campaign: https://hey.bild.de/experience/besser-schlafen-fit-in-den-tag-starten-04ba51e6

Sixt: https://www.sixt.de/mietwagenleitfaden/werbung/