VG made chess cool with its coverage of the World Chess Championship 2013 match, in which Norwegian Magnus Carlsen was challenging the reigning champion in a 14-day match. Because the match was in India, the reigning champion’s home country, VG did not have the broadcasting rights to cover it.

Instead, it created a multi-media campaign that captured the attention of the entire country.

So how does one top that in 2014?

You have people create their own chess-inspired sweater — the Magnus Sweater (named after their chess champion). People could design their own sweater, submit, and the design was automatically tweeted. They could also share via Facebook.

Judges looked over the designs and a chose finalists. Double world champion Carlsen selected the big winner.

The results were impressive:

• VGTV debuted during the chess championship and saw 100,000 viewers per day, 65% of whom were under the age of 50.
  
  
• TV viewership of the actual chess matches increased 20% over expectations (and 60% higher than the competition).
  
  
• The Magnus sweater Web site had 156,000 unique users, spending an average of more than three minutes on the site.

Watch the video above for the whole story. 

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