With more active gamers on the planet than Roman Catholics, gaming is fundamentally changing the way we socialise.

But what’s social about playing games alone, in your bedroom, talking to people online who you’ve never met face to face?

As the official snack brand of all social occasions, we wanted to find a way to make gaming less virtually social and more… actually social.

The Pringles Battle Couch is the world’s first 100-seat multiplayer gaming sofa. A single, specially designed piece of furniture that encourages a group of people who usually socialise over a 4G internet connection, to play together and socialise in the same room.

Travelling from their bedrooms across the world, gamers played the ultimate death match for all to see, in a 2 hour live-streamed event on the online gaming broadcast platform Twitch.tv

The partnership with Sony PlayStation and Twitch produces a unique live event experience, a digital installation piece, and a brand-new entertainment format all in one go.

To increase the sale of Pringles, the challenge was to encourage more social occasions where people could enjoy Pringles together.

Starting with the insight that there were now more active gamers than Roman Catholics, the aim was to put Pringles at the heart of gaming with a new point of view – to make it more physically social.

The platform of Twitch.tv was used to put the activation at the heart of the gaming community in an authentic way through their mobile app and desktop site.

The Pringles Battle Couch is a specially built, 6.5 tonne, fully sprung, wooden framed, faux velour 100-seat gaming sofa.

It brought 100 players from across the world together, to battle it out over multiple games titles and find 1 winner.

The tournament was broadcast over 2 hours on Twitch.tv to 6 different markets, hosted by a gaming celebrity and local market commentators.

Before the event, influencers’ unboxing videos advertised the tournament to their followers to attract competitors and publicise the broadcast, while teaser films played on Twitch and PlayStation channels.

The event featured personalised players’ shirts, 100 networked PS4 consoles, bespoke VFX broadcast assets, hand-stitched Battle Couch logos for the sofa, 12m high 8-bit digital screen animations, and even a bespoke “Golden Pringle” winner’s trophy.

A hashtag amplified players experiences, and the footage became social content to establish Pringles’ gaming credentials to a wider Pringles audience.

• 45% sales uplift in the month the campaign went live.

• Total campaign views: 4.9 million.