It’s a basic fact, gaming and junk food were made for each other, for a simple reason… when you are absorbed in the game, you use up several bars of mental energy. Suddenly, you feel hungry and naturally look around for the nearest and quickest energy fix at your fingertips. Which in turn means questionable food choices…. the usual suspects, chocolate, crisps, pizzas, saturated fats.

All gamers can recognize this problem.

And it’s a health issue for 3 billion gamers of all ages, and especially for younger people.

This is a challenge for the global leader in food transition, Carrefour.

There are billions of gamers out there, we need to act for food

So how can we inspire gamers to make healthier food choices while playing?

The Healthy Map on Fortnite

Teaming up with Europe’s biggest streamers, Carrefour launches a creative map on Fortnite, the « Healthy map ». The very first map is where players will gain life only by eating fruits and vegetables.

You literally gain strength by eating healthy food. The more fruits and veggies you eat, the stronger you get. Eating healthy is at the heart of the game.

Changing ingrained behaviour is the most difficult challenge. And it’s all the more difficult when fast food brands have been advertising heavily for years within video games to make junk food the official fuel of gamers.

We built a three-tiered influence strategy:

- Creating a behaviour in the Fortnite gameplay that can become a behaviour in your life: you gain lives with fruits and vegetables in this virtual world, as in the real world.

- Considering gamers as athletes. Gaming is no longer a leisure activity, it’s a sport. If you want to be competitive in your sport, eating well is a key factor for your performance.

- Teaming up with the biggest streamers of 7 countries to spread this message and gain persuasion. For example, we teamed up with Teeqzy (777K followers on Twitch) to organize a tournament on the new map:

We created the Fortnite “Healthy Map” with MakaMakes, designers of Fortnite creative maps. Building a map where “healthy” is king: from fruits and vegs’ organic fields to a supermarket of future.

We released the map through PR, digital and social media campaign in July:

- Targeted ads spread the video teaser on gamers’ favourite platforms (Twitch, YouTube, TikTok, Twitter)

- Local leading streamers from 7 countries (France, Poland, Romania, Italia, Belgium, Brazil, Spain), engaged their community. We teamed up with Teeqzy (777K followers on Twitch) to organize a tournament on the new map: 892,6K of reached profiles (IG, Twitch, Twitter, YouTube).

- Carrefour also activated its gamer customer base to announce its presence on Fortnite.

We hacked Twitch to intercept players eating junk food inviting them on the map to eat healthy food.

We transformed the Fortnite «map code» into a discount code on fruits and vegetables, in our stores.

Awareness and changing behaviour were our first KPIs:

- We reached over 11 million gamers and generated over 1 million interactions.

- Events with streamers had a huge engagement rate: 21.9%.

- Our teaser performed on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, with a click-to-rate twice superior compared to the 2020 average benchmark of similar campaigns (0.36% vs 0.17%).

- Twitch generated excellent results with a completion rate of 83%.

Our next step is to make healthy food more accessible to gamers in our stores. By transforming the Fortnite “Map Code” into a discount code on fruits and vegetables.