Frank’s has always been a passion-led brand with a tremendous loyal following and Frank’s users (as the tagline goes) put that $#!T on everything! Frank’s wanted to harness that love for the brand with a key passion that they know is in their consumers’ lives – Sports & Gaming.
Due to the real-world implications of the pandemic and fans unable to attend live events, Frank’s wanted to bring a sports sponsorship moment to fans in a virtual and safe, at-home environment.
To provide intrinsic in-game advertising and its significant impact on purchase intent, Frank’s RedHot® and dentsuX partnered with Frameplay to launch their first intrinsic in-game advertising campaign.
The campaign was targeted to all gamers ages 25 – 54 across the United States who play games rated Everyone, Everyone 10+, Teen, and Mature with genres including action, adventure, casual, indie, racing, role playing, simulation, strategy, and sports.
Gaming is a unique form of media that it requires the user’s complete, undivided attention. Unlike watching TV or browsing the internet where users can multitask between multiple forms of media, gaming is a lean-in activity that leaves little room for distraction. Being that gamers love to enhance their favorite activity with delicious snack foods, intrinsic in-game allows Frank’s RedHot® to stand out in terms of both brand exposure and reaching their targeted demographic.
To appeal to gamers, in-game advertising creative must be concise, yet memorable. So, Frank’s RedHot®, dentsuX, and Frameplay designed an ad that was truly authentic in the game through high-quality snack food images, prominent logo display, and catchy copy. Instead of in-game advertising that pauses the game to show an ad, intrinsic in-game advertising is shown during the actual gameplay and doesn't disrupt the experience of the game, providing realism to gameplay and thus more authentically resonating with gamers and protecting their gaming experience.
This campaign was the first intrinsic in-game advertising campaign for Frank’s RedHot®, and the start of a larger gaming strategy for McCormick.
Delivering 16M+ impressions, the campaign delivered at -20% vs benchmark with 100% viewability. Gamers also spoke up and reinforced that the campaign was a significant success in driving awareness, recall, and purchase intent. The Comscore Brand Lift Study showed that Frank’s RedHot® saw double-point brand lift across all major categories, including aided awareness (+38.7 pts), mobile ad recall (+20.2 pts), campaign message association (+11.2 pts), fit as a game sponsor (+22.7 pts), likeness of Frank’s RedHot® sponsorship in games (+32.2 pts), and likelihood to purchase the condiment (+26.7 pts).
Additionally, Frank’s RedHot® saw double-point brand lifts across the board for brand attributes, which included liking the flavor (+16.9 pts), thinking the product is a great snack or appetizer (+24 pts), thinking the brand is trustworthy (+16.7 pts), believing the product gives the right amount of spiciness and heat (+17 pts), and that the product saves time (+14.7 pts).
According to Comscore, the standard industry benchmarks are single-digit brand lifts. Mobile norms include +4.4 pts for brand awareness, +9.1 pts for mobile ad recall, and +3.3 pts for purchase intent. Additionally, mobile norms for CPG brands are typically +3.2 pts for brand awareness, +7.5 pts for mobile ad recall, and +4.4 pts for purchase intent. The results of this study not only show the efficacy of intrinsic in-game advertising from a brand awareness perspective; they also prove that the ads leave a positive impact on the gamer, giving them purchase intent!
