EA Sports was looking for a way to grow its top selling Sports video game franchise “Madden NFL.” For the game’s August launch exclusively at Walmart, EA Sports partnered with Gillette for the “Look & Play Like A Winner” promotion. This was the third year of collaboration between Gillette, EA Sports and Walmart.
The promotion also highlighted a Madden NFL brand extension—“Madden Ultimate Team” —where consumers were offered “Madden Ultimate Team” players and game strategy videos via a co-branding effort on 1.5 million Gillette products featured exclusively at Walmart. Print ads, banner ads, P-O-P and a TV spot were also utilized. All items drove traffic to a co-branded microsite where consumers could redeem the codes for coveted players, and unlock exclusive strategy videos. Every third code was a winner.
The primary goal of the promotion was to increase overall brand awareness of “Madden NFL 12” by using additional outlets to promote the game. A secondary goal was to increase trial of “Madden Ultimate Team.”
Walmart hosted co-branded banner ads and created a Gillette landing page on its homepage. The banners linked to a trailer of the strategy videos and encouraged consumers to unlock more codes. A national TV spot was created with Walmart, Gillette and Sony PlayStation that prominently featured “Madden NFL 1”2 and the “Look & Play Like a Winner” promotion during the August launch window.
Overall, the “Look & Play Like a Winner” promotion generated 600+ million impressions for the “Madden NFL 12” brand. This awareness boosted first week sales of the game, which were up 9% over the previous year. Redemptions of “Madden Ultimate Team” codes increased 38% over a similar promotion from last year.
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