Olips, a Mondelez International-owned gum and candy brand based in Turkey, wanted to improve on the efforts of its ongoing campaign, "The Refreshing Game Changer." To do so, the brand enhanced its efforts to connect with the gaming community, expanding its target audience, hosting gaming events, and becoming a sponsor of a popular esports team.
With its "The Refreshing Game Changer" campaign, Olips wanted to influence preference and reach across its target audience.
This campaign first launched in 2020, but still had not achieved the desired results. According to the TGI trend report, the desired consumer preference levels had not been reached in the years 2020, 2021, and 2022. As such, Olips needed to ramp up its efforts.
The target audience for this latest campaign iteration was gamers. Olips segmented this gamer audience into three groups based on their levels of interest (determined by how many hours they played games per week). The first group, dubbed "Gaming Enthusiasts," became the core audience, and Olips prioritized them. However, the brand didn't want to miss out on less active gamers. As such, it created a second group called "Social Gamers," which were defined individuals who play games for social interaction. The third group was "Light Gamers," and was primarily comprised of those who play games on mobile or casually follow gaming for entertainment.
Olips developed a three-stage strategy:
During the Explore stage, Olips planned sponsorship deals and focused on tournaments that spoke the language of core gamers. These relationships were placed at the center of the strategy. Olips sponsored one of the top esports teams, Fire Flux, which was announced during Unlost's interactive live broadcast. Simultaneously, the Refreshing Tournaments series was launched, awarding prizes to gaming enthusiasts.
The impact of the Explore stage was then enhanced during the Boost stage, as the effort expanded to all target audiences. The brand's game-related messages were strategically placed on appropriate platforms and fun influencer collaborations and YouTube videos were created. Additionally, Olips Gaming was featured on mobile and desktop games on Twitch, Onedio, and Spotify.
Olips hosted over 3,000 amateur gamers with its Refreshing Tournaments and achieved approximately 30 million views across all platforms. The brand's influencer collaborations on YouTube garnered over 3 million views. In 2023, the preference rate among the gamer audience increased by eight points, reaching 23 percent for the first time.
The fans of the sponsored team and the amateur players participating in the tournament strongly embraced Olips. Besides the live streams on X (formerly Twitter), numerous positive comments were posted in community groups.
