To spread awareness about autism and social responsibility among children and teens, Istanbul Grand Airport (İGA) wanted to take their creativity to the next level. Rather than focusing on sharing their message to just airport visitors and travelers, the brand’s marketing team wanted to look beyond the physical world and reach young audiences within a virtual one – the metaverse.
İGA’s overall goal of their campaign was to reach and connect with kids and teenagers across Türkiye via their metaverse activation, celebrating World Autism Day by raising autism awareness while also giving back to the community.
The main focus of Istanbul Grand Airport’s campaign strategy was to promote their social cause for World Autism Day across multiple mediums - from the big screens of the airport to more advanced technology, including Augmented Reality (AR) and the metaverse.
The first installment of the campaign saw the brand organizing art workshops for children with autism. There, kids were allowed to unleash their creativity and imagination, with their final pictures taking pride of place as part of an exhibition at the İGA.
To amplify the impact and interest of the artworks even further, a selection of these paintings were chosen to be animated and uploaded to digital AR platforms during the exhibition, where airport guests could use AR technology to bring the designs to life.
Following the exhibition, many of these artworks were turned into NFTs and auctioned to raise money for the Turkish Autistic Support and Education Foundation (TODEV).
The next step of the campaign was to display the artworks within the metaverse to spread autism awareness to kids and teens online. İGA worked with Turkish ad network Tooplay and Anzu, the world’s most advanced in-game advertising solution, to bring the artworks into metaverse gaming platform Roblox.
Roblox is a space where millions of players gather to create, share, and play games in immersive worlds. With over 20 million games and more than 202 million monthly active users logging in to play, socialize, create, consume content, and interact with brands, it is one of the biggest gateways for the metaverse and a favored digital platform for kids everywhere, especially in Türkiye which is one of the top 10 countries for the largest number of Roblox players and Roblox developers – making the popular platform the perfect choice for the brand to communicate İGA’s message with kids and teens en masse online.
Teaming up with Anzu, who provided advanced technology, knowledge of the adtech and gaming space, and strong relationships with top Roblox creators, IGA Istanbul Airport as able to showcase the creative artworks and promote their social cause across Roblox’s most popular games – known as “experiences” – to a huge young audience celebrating World Autism Day.
Anzu’s turnkey solution allowed the artworks to slot into the pre-existing game to elevate gamers’ experience from day one, bringing advertising to life and complementing the gameplay, rather than disrupting it. By featuring the artworks as banner ads within already hugely popular and well-established games, rather than creating their own experience from scratch, İGA capitalized and leveraged pre-existing audiences, saving time and resources.
IGA Istanbul Airport displayed the artworks within many of Roblox’s most popular experiences, featuring them on 3D in-game objects to bring their 2D creations to life. Each artwork was shown in a way that was blended into the in-game environment, from roadside billboards to the side of buildings, to reflect real-life advertising placements within the metaverse.
İGA Istanbul Airport’s Roblox campaign ran over the course of six days, from March 29 to April 3 2022, and achieved staggering results.
In just under one week, the campaign generated almost 1M impressions across some of Roblox’s most popular experiences. Anzu only counts an impression if it has been viewed, as a result the campaign achieved a 100% viewability rate, with the ads appearing throughout the experiences on 3D objects including roadside billboards, and on the sides of buildings. This allowed İGA to effectively reach thousands of young players to help spread autism awareness in a natural and engaging way within a brand-safe environment.
