2024 Winner

CASE SUMMARY

Video games have evolved significantly since the very first iteration. Today, games have the ability to transport us to another world with advanced on-screen action and stimuli. While this is an incredible experience, it also means that more is required from our bodies and brains to focus and play, giving rise to a new phenomenon: gaming headaches.

According to the research, 71% of gamers are concerned about headaches related to prolonged gaming, yet the majority (80%) of them play through the pain. The gaming medium is particularly interesting because of its immersive nature and the unique challenges it presents to both physical and cognitive health. While seeking a healthy balance to reduce potential side-effects is key, it was important for Advil Canada to explore concepts in where the time you do spend gaming is of higher quality.

This was an opportunity for Advil to demonstrate its leadership and expertise with this new kind of headache within a specific community. To the 6 million gamers in Canada, gaming headaches can seem like an unavoidable price to play. The brand’s goal was to show players of all levels that gaming headaches can be prevented through proactive and simple solutions.

Gaming headaches are commonly caused by in-game factors like lighting, motion sensitivity, audio levels, and more, that can be adjusted by gamers themselves – if they just know how. “Advil Head Settings” help gamers hack their headaches.

The agency brought neuroscience and gaming together to tackle gaming headaches. They partnered with neuroscientist Dr. Séamas Weech to understand [what they learned from him]. They also partnered with the gaming community to identify the right settings adjustments to codify “Advil Head Settings”.

To launch, the brand developed a 2 and a half minute docu-style OLV that explained the phenomenon of gaming headaches, shared the expert research process, and recommended in-game settings of “Advil Head Settings”. The OLV took on a nostalgic and playful tone, filled with several ‘game world’ references that would humor and engage audiences.

Based on top channels favoured by gamers, the full-length 2 and a half minute OLV was promoted on YouTube, with accompanying cutdowns shared across Advil Canada’s social channels, Twitch, Amazon,
and Discord.

The team also created a landing page, where gamers could download the “Advil Head Settings” and access additional information on proactive tips to healthy gaming.

To increase awareness, engagement, and adoption across the gaming community, the brand partnered with gaming influencers on Twitch to promote the different Head Settings based on the game they were known to play. While live, the influencers demonstrated to viewers the “Advil Head Settings” guide on their computer and adjusted their own settings in real time before playing.

This was also further promoted with an earned media strategy to connect with Canada’s tech and national media through an announcement release, interviews and opportunities to reviews “Advil Head Settings”.

Advil was able to engage the gaming community in a unique and authentic way that successfully drove awareness on gaming headaches and easy solutions reducing ways. From high engagement on the twitch takeover sessions and content with creators, this purpose led campaign was a stepping stone to future conversations in space.

As a strategic and purpose led campaign targeted at Canadian gamers, this campaign drove talkability across channels that gamers found relevant. With over 100 stories and 5M impressions in earned media and interviews with the likes of Tech veteran Marc Saltzman’s show Tech Talk, the campaign saw features in key tech outlets like Mobile Syrup, Console Creatures, to marketing stories that highlighted the pioneering and unique efforts by a pain relief brand.

This impact was further amplified with positive sentiment and engagement on Twitch, IG, YouTube and the campaign’s landing page which allowed gamers to understand, interact and learn more about
“Advil Head Settings”.

The campaign saw an impressive 3.15% organic engagement rate that surpassed industry standards of 2% by 57.5%, and over 14,000 clicks to the landing page website, generating over 5M social impressions across TikTok, Instagram and Twitch.

This one-of-a-kind endeavor by Advil Canada to offer a proactive solution to reducing gaming headaches received a 100% positive sentiment and has paved the way to connecting with a growing gamer community in Canada.

Credits

Anna Nowak – Senior Vice President, Strategy, Edelman Canada
Anthony Chelvanathan – Chief Creative Officer, Edelman Canada
Shauna Roe – Creative Director, VP, Edelman Canada
Ioana Brain – Senior Designer, Edelman Canada
Natee Likitsuwankool - Creative Director, VP, Edelman Canada
Elma Karabegovic – Creative Director
Catherine Santos – Vice President, Integrated brand, Edelman Canada
Shantelle Pereira – Senior Account Manager, Brand, Edelman Canada
James Lachno - Vice President, Edelman Canada Head of Social & Content, Digital
Peter McIntyre – Vice President, Digital, Edelman Canada
Evan Wong – Account Manager, Digital, Edelman Canada
Jessica Lee – Vice President, Influencer Marketing, Edelman Canada
Jennisha Shah - Senior Account Manager, Influencer Marketing, Edelman Canada
Gabriel-Lee Steed - Account Executive, Influencer Marketing, Edelman Canada
Greg Vanier – Head of Crisis and Risk, Canada

Agency Partner: Publicis