Case Study: EA Sports & Brands

In-game advertising / marketing

Challenge

Gatorade, State Farm and several other brand marketers seek innovative ways to gain brand awareness with engaged consumers between in the elusive 18-34 age demographic. Increasing the LTV (lifetime value) of a consumer in efforts to achieve greater digital and social footprints.

Solution

EA Sports, division of parent Electronic Arts, develops and publishes sports video games. FIFA, NHL, NBA Live and Madden NFL are part of their sports franchise of games. The company has replicated the popular commercialization of real-world sporting events in the virtual realm. From leagues to players, teams to stadiums, EA aims to amplify every official brand sponsor and partner.

Results

Increased digital and social footprints

For the teams, players, clubs and brand partners alike, the sponsorship of the game is worth every penny. Brands enjoy the global exposure and greatly increase their brand impressions via digital and social footprints, attracting sales opportunities and elevated brand consideration. For brand marketers, the value of in-game ads occurs with the frequency and duration users visualize the brand. This is often well in excess of 100 million brand impressions per year considering the huge popularity of these sports games like FIFA, NBA and NFL.

Hours per week:

Increased brand awareness

When combined with culturally relevant sports enthusiasts, these brand integrations are a huge success. In-game brands are ‘always on’ in a highly engaged and otherwise fragmented global media environment which is increasingly difficult to achieve on many other traditional linear adverts without a considerably larger media budget.

Target demographics and lifetime value

In-game ads (brand placements within video games) have the added advantage of serving large-scale attentive audiences.

From a recent study, the average gamer spends six hours a week on their hobby. 60% claim it eats into their sleep and 11% admit they’ve taken sick days from work to play. Half of young male gamers, meanwhile, would quit their job if they stood a chance of becoming a pro gamer. It also helps increase the lifetime value of the consumer and the lifespan of a game, but at the same time they are keen not to serve brands that do not add value to the players game experience.