Century 21 and Mullen identified an opportunity to reach today’s social homebuyers in a unique and engaging way - by purchasing virtual real estate in one of the most popular Facebook games, Electronic Arts’ SimCity Social. We created a branded structure - a CENTURY 21 Office Building – that players could build in their city to earn virtual currency (Simoleons), helping them grow their cities by buying new homes, businesses and land. Players also had the option to perform “friend or foe" actions on neighbors’ CENTURY 21 Office Buildings – such as consulting with an agent or stealing open house cookies – to earn additional merits in the game as well as earn a free energy boost by watching an in-game, branded CENTURY 21 Smarter. Bolder. Faster. advertisement. The results of the three-week campaign were a huge success. Nearly 192,000 branded structures were placed, we garnered 23,000 views of our branded video and the campaign drove 53,466 Facebook “likes". Objectives • Drive awareness and brand preference among our target audience of consumers between the ages of 25 and 34, representing the largest share of homebuyers. • Engage with socially savvy homebuyers by delivering the virtual dream of homeownership to millions of the brand’s target consumers. • Drive Facebook “likes" of Century 21 Real Estate LLC. • Support the brand's Smarter. Bolder. Faster. marketing campaign by driving views of its advertising. Strategy The new generation of homebuyers and sellers are more socially savvy than ever before. Armed with the knowledge that 81 million people play social games at least once a day (PopCap Games 2011) and social gamers are 27 percent more likely to have either bought their first home in the last year or are planning to buy their first home in the next year (Simmons New Media Study, Fall 2011), Century 21 and Mullen identified an opportunity to partner with the largest game provider, EA Games, on the most popular social network - Facebook. With more than 10 million Facebook players, the majority of the gaming brand’s SimCity Social users fall within the 25-to-34-year-old age group, representing the largest share of homebuyers. The alignment between audiences and the nature of the game - creating and maintaining your own real estate empire for virtual profit- produced a unique opportunity the client/agency team couldn't ignore. Tactics • Developed a branded structure - a CENTURY 21 Office Building – that players could build in their city to earn virtual currency (Simoleons), helping them grow their cities by buying new homes, businesses and land. • Created a tab within the CENTURY 21 Facebook page where players were directed by in-game ads to claim their CENTURY 21 Office. • Players also had the option to perform “friend or foe" actions on neighbors’ CENTURY 21 Office Buildings – such as consulting with an agent or stealing open house cookies – to earn additional merits in the game. • Users were able to earn a free energy boost by watching an in-game, branded CENTURY 21 Smarter. Bolder. Faster. advertisement. Results The results of the three-week campaign were a huge success. Nearly 192,000 branded structures were placed, we garnered 23,000 views of our branded video with a 94% video completion rate and the campaign drove 53,466 Facebook “likes" – a roughly 225% increase from the start of the campaign. Mullen also secured 28 media placements resulting in 53,430,670 media impressions.
