We all remember unique advertising campaigns: whatever industry an advert is promoting, a memorable campaign can be truly effective and help a product become a top seller.
With so many of us now gaming on several devices and platforms, developers need to stand out from the crowd. Strong advertising campaigns are a way of doing this. Let’s explore some of the best adverts and campaigns whilst looking at the impact they’ve had.
Paddy Power’s campaigns keep them in the public eye
Paddy Power’s online casino is one of the most popular of its kind. The betting and gaming provider has over 13 million regular customers. A big factor in capturing so many customers has been their expansive promotion and advertising strategy. They have a presence across all forms of media, including in the online casino sector at Paddy Power where there is a well-known Wonder Wheel where players can spin for daily prizes among other promotions like free spins and free bets. Plus, their adverts include cameos from some of the world’s most talked-about figures. Who remembers the online casino advert featuring Jose Mourinho? Many would argue that this strategy has been successful for the company.
Wii promotion proves to be successful for Nintendo
The video games industry has been at the forefront of some interesting advertising campaigns. An example of this is from Nintendo and the launch of the Wii. The company highlighted their unusual new console at launch time, creating adverts that showed several non-traditional gamers playing the Nintendo Wii. Within a few years of the console being on the market, it sold over 67 million units. Following on from a less successful predecessor in the GameCube, many saw the Wii as a turning point for Nintendo, as we can see at https://slate.com/business/2012/10/. How much of an impact did these adverts have?
Halo 3’s iconic Believe campaign
Halo 3 was launched with much fanfare and excitement back in 2006. Developer Bungie’s Believe advertising campaign played a big part in this. The campaign involved several live-action TV adverts alongside features in magazines and ads on the Xbox live marketplace. A big reason for such a campaign was that Microsoft felt that the game’s prequel didn’t receive as much publicity, despite being well received by most critics.
Once released, the game set a record for the highest gross of a video game within 24 hours of its release. For a long period, the game remained popular and returned to the top 20 charts a year after its original release. The campaign and investment in the game proved to be a wise one.
Stevenage FC gains some new fans
A unique promotional campaign of more recent time involved FIFA 20, Stevenage FC and Burger King. Back in October 2019, the Stevenage challenge started, you canread more on this here https://www.stevenagefc.com/news/2019/. They encouraged gamers to play as Stevenage and upload their virtual goals to social media platforms. Stevenage became the most used side on the game’s career mode. It all turned out to be an incredible success, and it was later praised for its effectiveness by many marketing experts.
The future of advertising in gaming
With people now consuming media in several ways, advertising has quickly evolved. In a previous era, television advertising was the most utilised by marketing and advertising directors across the United Kingdom. Now we are starting to see an increase in cross-platform campaigns. Halo 3 was one of the first examples of this, but this is now common practice. It will be fascinating to see the direction it goes in the future. Could we start to see more campaigns like the Stevenage challenge?
