Week Nine- Hasbro Nerf Gamescon
By OMD Germany
Video Games are a global phenomenon with the industry now worth over $23.5 billion. It is, therefore, no surprise that in Germany alone there are over 29 Million gamers. However, the rising love of gaming has resulted in the average child spending up to 136 minutes video gaming a day! Our aim was to re-energise gamers and beat the digital industry with their own weapons.
Bringing gamers into the action
Using the Hasbro Nerf, we sought to get gamers away from the screen and take part of the action whilst unlocking additional growth potential for Hasbro’s fun blaster range.
So how can Hasbro make a lost generation enthusiastic about a range of non-digital toy guns? It was time to fight back for physical fun, but in order to relate to our gamers, we needed to make sure we had a fun digital element. We, therefore, headed straight to the dragon’s den, the biggest international Digital Game Fair in Cologne, and conquered the epicentre of the digital gamer’s world with the most famous influencers of this generation.
An analogue playground
15 YouTube stars invaded the Gamescom equipped with Nerf Blasters turning the whole fair into an analogue playground; proving the strength of real life fun with Nerf. The Gamescom action was recorded and instantly uploaded by the YouTube stars amplifying the Hasbro brand and messages to millions of followers. Moreover, we kicked off a sustainable wave of content creation via the YouTube stars who carried on the Nerf story at home and encouraged their fans to use the hashtag #NerfNicht and create even more real life Nerf-Action Videos online.
The results
A campaign for Nerf’s real live action was born. The results exceeded all expectations with the hashtag #NerfNicht hitting the Top 5 German Twitter trending charts. The videos received over 3.8 Million views (+500% versus benchmark) and 8.2 Million contacts within a 1.9 Million target group, over 190,000 comments and over 653,000 like. Most importantly, Hasbro sold +40% more Nerf Blasters versus the previous year, making Nerf the best performing Hasbro brand (not limited to boys!) in Germany.
