Round 4 of 8: November

 

BRAD ELDRIDGE, Executive Creative Director, ISOBAR AUSTRALIA

As the co-founder of Soap Creative – now merged with Isobar – the team took out the ‘AdNews Digital Agency of the Year’ title four times under Brad’s watch.

In his time as a lead creative, his work has been awarded at Cannes, MIXX and Spikes. His background in graphic design, interactive design and advertising produces ideas for clients that balance effective communications and innovation.

He is passionate about nurturing a creative culture amongst his teams and regularly lectures and consults on course structures at Sydney and Melbourne universities to help foster the digital industry.

Outside of work, Brad loves taking his kids to see animated films, taking photos and mountain biking with mates.

Brief: "MAKE MARKETERS USE GAMES"

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“Create an campaign that convinces marketers around the world to consider games and play marketing as part of their marketing strategy.”
— Brad Eldridge

The opportunity:

Games are a powerful way of achieving reach, engagement, social sharing and a deep and memorable brand experience.

The challenge:

Not enough marketers consider games, or more broadly, play marketing, as a solution to their marketing and business challenges.

The context:

Despite the success of App Store games, the growth of console and PC gaming and many examples of brands using games successfully (see below examples) games remain off the radar of many marketers. Exactly why this may be is for you to solve, but from my experience it is a combination of:

  • marketers being personally unfamiliar with games,

  • thinking games are only for kids

  • games being perceived as more expensive than regular campaign production, and/or

  • games being a difficult thing for marketers to sell internally (for all the reason mentioned).

Your brief:

Create an trade marketing campaign on behalf of digital agencies and game developers that convinces marketers around the world to consider games and play marketing as part of their marketing strategy.

How I’ll be judging:

I’ll be awarding the ideas that excite me most. If I’d want to see the idea come to life or share with my marketing colleagues, then you’ll be awarded. I don’t care what channels you use and how much your idea would cost. I don’t care wether you use one great print campaign or a full integrated solution. I just want to see your ability to think big and get the message across to busy CMOs in a compelling and succinct way.

Play Marketing Examples:

Successful play marketing I’ve been a part of:

  • 5X Mutant Gum: This won multiple Cannes Lions for it’s ability to integrate the product and media into a gamified experience.

  • Lynx Apollo: This is another example of how an idea for a game can explode out into a full campaign to tell a product story.

  • Tune The Tuned: This campaign is live right now thanks to our client Foot Locker and their partner Nike. It’s an example of a more scaled back ‘gaming’ experience where you build your own shoe design and share to social. In under a week it encouraged over 17,000 design shares to Instagram.

Successful play marketing from around the world, note the different types of ‘play’ here:

And there are many more. Have fun researching. I can’t wait to see your ideas.

 
 

Deadline extended to January 7th 2019, 11:59pm Los Angeles time.