Summary
Discover More, Win More - a simple but innovative HTML game where we captured our audience's complete attention to build awareness about the Prime Day event while engaging them with nuggets on deals, offers and more. This quick little game tapped into our audience's high appetite for gaming, and helped us achieve our objective, while breaking out of the clutter of sale-communication by other brands and websites!
Challenge
In India, we love our sales. But with brands rushing to recoup revenues after the dry period that was the start of the pandemic, from a consumer's point of view it seemed like there was a sale going on everywhere for some reason or the other! From "End of Reason" sales to Festive sales to Weekend sales, it felt like there was a sale on all the time. So, when Amazon Prime was ready to host it's once in a year exclusive sale event, Prime Day, for Prime members, there was a very real risk that people would be all ‘sale'd-out, and we would get lost in the clutter.
Objective
Prime member's biggest exclusive event was back, and Amazon Prime needed to ensure it would be seen - we needed to build awareness and stand out of the sale clutter. The standard formula had served us well - of highlighting benefits, showcasing the various exclusive products and pieces of entertainment, and shining a spotlight on the huge markdowns for just Prime members. But we knew this would not be enough to help us break through the clutter.
Strategy
With sales messaging everywhere, whatever communication we crafted would likely be ‘just another ad' in the wider world of sale ads. To stand out we needed to engage the audience, and we knew that a simple static or brand film would not cut ice. To ensure we grabbed people's attention, we needed to create something that they would willingly engage with and spend time on. Enter Gaming. Research showed us that with the pandemic raging on, people were entertaining themselves by casually gaming on their smartphones whenever they got a chance. These casual games became the hook we used for our awareness campaign. This nugget of an insight became our means to capture people's attention and showcase our information as gratification!
Data
In the past 2 years, the gaming industry has seen a massive boost. With nowhere to go and a lot of free time, our audience had turned to gaming. The gaming time increased up to 45% during the pandemic (source : Deccan Chronicle) Casual gaming market in India has 420 Mn users, of this 94% are accounted for by mobile users. (KPMG June 2021) With data showing us that Indians were putting all their attention towards gaming, we decided that Amazon's biggest exclusive event would reach the audience where they were.
Solution
As gaming was the hook we wanted to leverage, we wanted to make it more exciting, while fitting it into Prime's 2021 theme "Ocean of Joy". Thus came the ‘Discover More, Win More' game. We made the game a complete experience under the ocean. As the players came onto the HTML game, they would control a scuba diver surrounded by fish, treasure boxes and our amazing deals, new launches, and more! All the scuba divers had to do was collect as many benefits to build their high score, while avoiding making contact with any submarines, jellyfish, or other underwater baddies.
Results
This quick little game was able to capture the audience's complete attention with no other offer related communication! We were able to engage and inform our audience in one fell swoop. They discovered more about the Prime Day event while winning more! Through the ‘Discover More, Win More' game, we managed to bring in: Over 5,000 unique players Each with an average game time of nearly 40 seconds, With each player playing the game an average of 8 times! Bringing us over 31,000 gaming sessions, And the top score achieved was a whopping 146,312 - all of which became points for the player to leverage against deals and more, on Prime Day.
