NBA 2K has been the world’s No.1 basketball franchise for two decades. In 2022 the next generation of Basketball landed with NBA 2K23.

Every year, the ‘hardcore’ fans jump in, purchasing pre-sale or on Day One.

There are also countless fans on the periphery that have an affiliation to the broader culture of the game. With NBA 2K23, and a new brand positioning of ‘Answer the Call’, there was no better time for these fringe fans to step up.

2K’s brief was to broaden the product’s appeal beyond traditional gamers, to generate earned scale and cultural conversation, and to bring in a new audience sitting on the periphery of basketball culture.

With the goal of boosting sales after the initial game drop, the creative would be required to break on Black Friday - two months post-launch - to encourage new fans to trial the game during a key sales period.

'Court in Session' was more than a marketing idea. It was, and is, a cultural platform designed to showcase NBA 2K23 to a new audience and excite them to ‘Answer the Call’.

To showcase the free-flow dynamic nature of basketball, we took the videogame’s unique sounds and fused them into original, modern Hip-Hop freestyle songs with some of Australia’s most revered talent.

Ball bounces became beats.

Slam Dunks became big drums.

Shoe squeaks - record scratches.

With the same sounds given to each of our three artists, it was up to them to ‘Answer the Call’ and leverage the sounds of the game in their own unique way.

The platform would celebrate the culture around the sport through music to take NBA 2K23 to new fans – not only showcasing its rich sounds, but celebrating the ‘flow’ of the game in an exciting way, stopping music fans in their tracks.

There is one music genre that has been part of basketball’s DNA for decades - Hip-Hop.

NBA 2K has always celebrated Hip-Hop through its soundtrack, with its annual in-game playlist reading like a greatest hits of the genre.

54% of all music streams for 13-39-year-olds are Hip-Hop, making it the biggest genre on the planet. This provided a heavy correlation for NBA 2K23’s target market of young, male Australians, aged 18-24.

This target market doesn’t live in traditional channels; they’re living life virtually and socially. The No.1 passion in Australia is undeniably music. And the love of basketball in Australia is at an all-time high, with participation rising 13.6% in 2022 to 1.3 million people.

The strategy was to celebrate basketball’s diverse culture, highlighting Hip-Hop as part of the sport’s – and videogame’s - DNA, in channels that are meaningful to our audience, to attract gamers in an authentic way.

It began with the creation of a library of sound effects taken from the NBA 2K23 game, hand-curated to build a distinct audio world for our artist to play with.

The hero brand sentiment of ‘answering the call’ was dissected for the artist, alongside an inspiration board.

Lyrically, it was important that the brand not get in the way of the creative process, so we left it entirely down to the artist to do what he does best.

The final beat took inspiration from 90’s and 00’s American Hip-Hop, with a west-coast inspired beat featuring a modern twist. Chillinit used this beat to write a unique freestyle over the top, incorporating the brand themes, the game, and basketball references.

The strength of the music and video truly came down to the craft: sonically, to create a sonic world that ‘feels’ basketball, and visually, to bring this audio world to life.

PR carried the campaign around the world, with a combined reach of 132 million people, across 59 pieces of impactful coverage, including Billboard, Rolling Stone, and locally in Australia, News Corp’s major metro masthead, The Daily Telegraph.

Total media impressions amounted 3.25 million across all assets.

On average, the music videos were 34% watched to completion, with an average view time of 53 seconds. While Spotify audio ads received an 80% completion rate, driving 441k impressions.

Most importantly for the brand, the campaign brought a new audience into the game with the impact for 2K games leading to a 30% month-on-month increase in sales following the campaign’s launch.