Sony Interactive Entertainment Italia

The objective

Driving awareness and consideration to drive sales amidst supply chain issues

Sony Interactive Entertainment Italia was looking to drive awareness and consideration for the PlayStation 5 in Italy amidst ongoing supply chain issues. The brand had yet to dive deeper into crowdsourcing ad content and while the team was eager to lean in, they were looking for a simple first step. Sony Interactive Entertainment Italia was hoping to counteract the challenges they were facing while exploring new ways to raise awareness of the PS5's availability at various retailers through the help of TikTok creators.

The solution

A full-funnel effort leveraging Branded Mission to amplify #LivefromPS5

Sony Interactive Entertainment Italia decided to partner with TikTok for a full-funnel #LivefromPS5 campaign. The campaign was the 1st-ever gaming-focused Branded Mission executed in Europe and the 1st-ever Branded Mission executed by Sony Interactive Entertainment globally.

#LiveFromPS5 was a Global Masterbrand campaign that featured multiple first-party IPs including God of War, Marvel's Spider-Man and Gran Turismo. Italy, like other markets in Europe, was part of this campaign. In order to soft sell its hardware, Sony Interactive Entertainment Italia focused on multiple exclusive, first-party IPs to gain consumer attention.

The approach focused on driving engagement in Phase 1 and lasted a full week, while Phase 2 focused on performance and retargeting efforts, lasting 30 days. In Phase 1, the brand ran a Branded Mission campaign, leveraging a Hashtag Challenge and a Branded Effect to supercharge engagement.

As part of the Hashtag Challenge, users were encouraged to become TV reporters and simulate a live news report about a popular PlayStation game using a Branded Effect with the hashtags #PS5ReporterForADay and #LivefromPS5. The Branded Effect simulated a typical news report graphic for added authenticity and playfulness. They also used TopView and In-Feed Ads to encourage participation.

In Phase 2, the brand leaned into two audiences in its retargeting efforts—those that participated in the Branded Mission and those that didn't. Gradually, entries were crowdsourced and converted into ads, selecting the content that performed best in Phase 1 as the key content to drive performance in the subsequent 30 days.

The results

Crushing campaign objectives and stimulating gamer engagement

With over 75 million campaign video views, Sony Interactive Entertainment's #Livefrom PS5 efforts in Italy successfully achieved campaign objectives and exceeded ad recall benchmarks, with a 15% lift in ad recall. The brand's first Branded Mission resulted in more than 715 user submissions, 28 of which were repurposed as high-quality, user-generated, ad content.

What's more, out of 48 million global views on #LiveFromPS5 hashtag, (between February 8 and March 8 2023), 38 million (79%) came from Italy across organic and paid. For context, in the same period of time, the US was responsible for 2 million views, while the UK accounted for 229,000.