Challenge
With so much competition for market share among video game console and accessory makers, a leading gaming brand needed to raise awareness of its new accessory and position its product as an entertainment device for the whole family.
Solution
The console maker turned to Microsoft Advertising to launch an integrated campaign on MSN that targeted 18- to 34-year-old males and fathers with teenaged children.
The game-console-accessory campaign on MSN featured display ads that invited visitors to enter a sweepstakes to win a free gaming accessory. The ads also featured video, Facebook and Twitter buttons, and links to articles about the gaming accessory. Other ads featured product reviews of the accessory from Amazon.
In addition, the campaign featured MSN Easy Video, a 300x250 ad that plays 15 or 30-second streaming video commercials within a conventional web page ad placement. (With MSN Easy Video, an ad auto-previews without sound for five seconds, then pauses. The user is then given the option to click through to an advertiser landing page or play the entire video with full sound. If the user clicks the mute/unmute button or the play/pause button before pause screen appears, the video will play in its entirety.)
Results
Two groups—one that had viewed the game-console-accessory campaign on MSN and one that had not—were simultaneously sampled and their responses compared.
The multimedia campaign drove strong results for the gaming accessory maker. For example, among fathers with children aged 12-17 in the home, the campaign offered:
- A seven percent lift in brand awareness.
- A 22 percent lift in brand favorability.
- A 22 percent increase in purchase intent.
- Fifty-four percent agreed that the accessory “makes me feel in control.”
Conclusion
Microsoft Advertising successfully raised awareness of the gaming accessory among all gamers and helped position the product as easy to use.
Download the full game-console-accessory campaign on MSN case study.
