PC Gamers refresh their gaming PC more often than the average consumer to keep up with the latest games’ spec requirements. They want to have the most immersive experience with the highest resolution settings and need their computer to be extremely responsive to keep up with friends and foes.

Our key challenge was to overcome awareness and perception barriers and get PC Gamers to upgrade to the Intel Core i7. The perception with PC Gamers was that the graphics processing unit (GPU) was more important than the central processing unit (CPU) and that lower-end CPUs were “good enough” for their gaming needs.

Many gamers were unaware of key performance improvements the Intel Core i7 could deliver for resource-hungry gaming tasks, streaming, competing, and virtual reality.

Content started in August to coincide with the biggest gaming events and releases of the year. We launched at PAX and followed at Oculus Connect 3 leveraging a group of top gaming influencers to bring fans at home the best of these events via live streams on Twitch. The recaps showcased the new hardware and games during interviews with developers. Working with developers we got early access to the year’s most anticipated PC titles, and a series of Twitch live streams gave fans a first look at the games and the superior gameplay on the Core i7. With PC Gamer, we built a high-end gaming PC, powered by Intel Core i7 and demonstrated its advantage in performance with some of the most CPU intensive titles. The campaign culminated with the Trending Gamer Award at Game Awards sponsored by Intel which recognized the top video game streamers in the world.

During the five-month campaign, we launched 60 pieces of co-created content generating 13.8M views of Intel content.

Our strategy paid off via consistent content that was centralized on the Core i7 proof points and delivered 21% lift in preference for the Core i7 versus all over CPUs. The campaign also saw an 8% lift on our primary and most difficult KPI, the CPU is the absolute most important part of my gaming experience.