By Gameloft for Maruti Suzuki: Nexa Baleno Buddy Pack
Maruti Suzuki has been creating a lot of sensation in the automobile market since the time it launched its premium automotive retail brand Nexa. It is a first-of-its-kind modern retail channel with a network of new age automotive showrooms across India that aims to meet the rising aspirations of emerging Indians. These showrooms host the premium cars from Maruti Suzuki, which at present include S Cross and Baleno.
To connect with people and establish itself as a premium brand, Baleno Nexa rolled out an in-game advertising campaign to adopt newer ways to catch the fancy of its consumers. The month long campaign has been designed as a buddy pack, a native integration that lets brands deliver messages at key moments of gameplay, in Gameloft’s top games like Asphalt 8: Airborne, Gangster Vegas, Modern Combat 5 etc. A sponsored game message was triggered at specific moments, inviting players to engage with the brand in return for in-game incentives.
Maruti Suzuki is no stranger in the automobile market. But to launch and establish its brand Nexa as premium brand and catch the attention of users for a longer period of time than traditional commercials, Maruti chose the route of in-gaming advertising. The idea was to create a platform through gaming that is swaying with class, sophistication, style and attitude; a creative piece that resonates with Maruti Suzuki Baleno Nexa’s brand image. With an in-depth game play, excellent production quality and entertainment factor, it helped them, reach out to a larger user base and provide high engagement levels. By integrating buddy pack, users were able to see a sponsored game message by Baleno Nexa triggered at specific moments of gameplay-MOMENT OF ACHIEVEMENT AND MOMENT OF DEFEAT, inviting them to engage with the brand upon which a user can avail in-game incentives. For more engagement, the users were directed to Nexa’s website to learn more about the features and engage with the brand baleno.
The brand was well merged within the gaming environment. Consequently, audiences naturally flowed in via the game homepage, ensuring communication with the consumers as simple and straight forward.
With this campaign, Maruti was able to insert their brand story through video and drive deeper brand engagement across platforms and screens in real time. It also effectively leveraged the untapped potential of mobile users through gamification, with specific moments of gameplay incentivized by in-game rewards, generating an impressive CTR of 1.80%.
The campaign turned out to be richly rewarding. The campaign has been successful in engaging the users with the brand in an in-gaming environment with over 1.1 Million impressions in 1 month. Maruti continued its mobile prowess at a strong CTR of 1.80% and Complete Engagement Rate of 82.84%.
Given the objectives that Maruti Suzuki Baleno Nexa was driving, the campaign was able to tap the mobile medium’s reach and interactive capabilities to engage users in an interactive and entertainment manner.
The campaign brought Maruti closer to its consumers. With mobile media growing in popularity and gaming commanding a high proportion of time spent on mobile for younger audiences, the campaign has succeeded in engaging an otherwise difficult-to-reach audience. The audience demographic segments, granular targeting ability and engaging format, made for the perfect mix to engage an otherwise unreachable market.
This campaign proved to be a good medium to evoke consumers’ feelings towards the brand. Due to the dynamic integration of the advertising message in the game, Maruti is being able to communicate to its users in an interactive entertainment environment where the players chose to get the message while enhancing their gaming experience through in-game rewards. The user behavior also showed a positive response to the technique of placing the product in a gaming environment than traditional types of advertisement. It proved to be an effective medium to create a buzz and leverage on the Gameloft gaming community.
If you, too, have executed exemplary campaigns in the last one year, go ahead and submit your nominations for the ICL Awards 2018 – India’s most sought-after Content programme of the Year.
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