Challenge

In the hugely competitive world of free online gaming, World of Tanks (WoT) was falling behind more exciting new competitors like Fortnite and Apex Legends. Without new news and an inherently less “colourful” experience, World of Tanks was facing declining playing times and new players were defaulting to the more well known games.

Insight

However, when we spoke to the older audience WoT caters to we found that though they were playing other games, they just weren’t having fun. Why not? Well, although these were battle-hardened gamers, they were consistently being let down by their reflexes and reaction times. In other words, they were constantly getting beaten by younger players, and they hated it.

Approach

We met this issue head on with our campaign: Stop Getting Owned By Kids. Other free-to-play online games prized reaction time over strategy, quick play over smart play and brute force over clever tactics. We wanted to highlight this discrepancy to a more worldly, wiser, older audience of gamers.

The ad shows our hero travelling through different games being machine-gunned by an eight year old in a war plane, blasted with a rifle by a teenager in a banana costume and roundhouse kicked by a schoolkid. Eventually our hero enters the World of Tanks; where the smart survive.

Results

The campaign received 13 million earned media impressions and a +32% uplift in belief that World of Tanks was a strategically challenging game.