In an endless ocean of video games and gaming subscriptions, Xbox Game Pass has made itself known to the gaming community by providing an impressive library of high-quality games at a low monthly cost. Its PC version, however, bumped into a challenge: it was getting a bit lost in the ocean.
PC players were either unaware of PC Game Pass (PCGP) in general or found themselves unclear of what benefits the subscription could unlock for them. Our goal was to fill this knowledge gap by introducing PCGP to the PC player audience in a fun, yet informative, way.
We faced our challenge head on by partnering with gaming-adjacent creators, like Kyedae, Caleb City, ayytrae, shadkindafunny, dimucc, padeeyahh, and others who were already familiar with premium PCGP games so that they could speak to the service with genuine authenticity. However, we didn’t want to make dull “educational pieces” and, quite frankly, we don’t know a single person who likes ads that feel like... well, ads.
We knew that PCGP’s target audience enjoys self-aware humor, so instead of having creators do a typical sponsored post, we took the time to study their content and worked with them to tailor a fourth-wall-breaking approach to their usual videos.
Each creator’s video was “hijacked” by a PCGP sponsorship where the many benefits of the subscription became a part of the overall story of the video. All the usual branded talking points that would typically feel forced or uninteresting were incorporated into content in an overtly fourth-wall-breaking manner, making for a wildly more entertaining viewing experience. To further expand the reach of this campaign, we then used the creator’s content in additional original content for our social channels.
Lastly, we topped off this campaign by being one of the first brands to use Snapchat’s newly introduced Sponsored Snap Takeover. We saw the potential in this product to speak to our audience in a new, innovative way. Gaming fans across the United States were sent a direct message from Xbox addressed “For PC gamers only” and, when they responded to us, they would receive a custom video message from creator RichBlackGuy that highlighted PCGP while directing them to the chat where users could seamlessly go to the Xbox website, explore the product, and make a purchase.
The campaign was a huge success with almost every other comment mentioning PC Game Pass. People even enjoyed the content so much that many shared rewatching them. Our campaign successfully created a ton of awareness for the gaming service with over 56M views, 91% net positive sentiment, 50% message penetration, and a 3X return on investment. Completion rates were as high as 61%!
Our Snapchat piece alone garnered 52M impressions, 100K clicks, 8 seconds of average attachment screen time, and a +36% in sign up events.
