5 Innovative Game Campaigns

The video and online games sector makes up one of highest grossing sectors within the entertainment industry, which means there is a lot of revenue available to create innovative and engaging campaigns. The list below offers a selection of unique and engaging game advertising campaigns.

Mario Kart 8

Mario Kart has long been an institution in the world of gaming after the first in the series launched in 1992 as a spin-off of the incredibly popular Super Mario series. The enduring popularity of Mario Kart did not stop the marketing team at Nintendo from creating a unique campaign for Mario Kart 8 back in 2017. Alongside the more traditional TV commercials and pre-order packages, a Mario Kart branded NASCAR was raced in the Nation Wide Series History 300. The campaign was very well received, with Nintendo selling 2 million copies of the game in the first month after release.

Unibet Slot Tournaments

The campaign for Unibet slots differs from other game advertising campaigns as it has not been designed to entice potential players to purchase a game, but Unibet’s campaigns excel in incentivizing game play. Unibet motivate their players to return to the site by offering new big cash tournaments every day. These ‘festivals’ work by offering a huge cash prize for the biggest win multiplayer of the selected games of the day. Not only are there big cash prizes to be won every day during the week, but on the weekends, the amount that can be won is 20 times bigger.

Angry Birds

The mobile gaming industry is currently worth nearly $90 million but back in 2009, when Angry Birds was launched, it was still a relatively obscure gaming platform. It was the innovative Angry Birds advertising campaign that really opened up the eyes of the world to the possibilities of mobile gaming.

The developers of the game understood that they needed to use a range of different advertising techniques to offer the campaign the exposure they were after. Angry Birds was featured as the first ‘game of the week’ on the UK app store. It was also the first mobile game to have a trailer released on YouTube, a video that has now has been viewed over 110 million times.

EA Sports Madden 15

The Madden NFL series has always led the way for innovative advertising campaigns, but it was their 2015 launch that was perhaps their most impressive. Instead of employing traditional advertising methods, EA used GIFs to market their new product. EA Sports released the Madden GIFERATOR to coincide with their release of Madden 15, with an aim to develop their connection with the NFL and reach more young football fans. The GIFERATOR combined NFL data with footage of Madden 15 gameplay to create GIFs of every game which were then displayed on sports websites.

These GIFs became hugely popular with football fans and were quickly circulated and shared across social medial platforms. This innovative marketing campaign was so successful that it made Madden 15 one of the most popular games in the US in 2015.

Wii Sports

Nintendo has sold over 8.6 million copies of Wii Sports and many experts believe that this success is all due to the savvy marketing campaign at the launch of the game back in 2006. The reason that this campaign is thought to have such an effect is due to the way that Nintendo marketed the game not just to children and young people, but individuals of all ages. The $200 million campaign used a range of methods such as television adverts, demonstration kiosks and even a musical tour. The campaigns focus was to show people how easy it was to use the controller and demonstrate the broad appeal of the gameplay.