Xbox is on a quest to make life more fun for everyone, and demonstrating to new gamers that their passions can play out in gaming with Xbox is key to spreading our shared love of the game. In this project, we had fun with the media and the medium by hacking the channel and serving up fun gaming content in a new and novel way to an audience who’s on the fence about the Xbox brand.

Xbox wanted to reach gamers who don’t have Xbox where they spend most of their time: Instagram. But Instagram's algorithm is smart, it learns what we like and serves it back for us to shop. To create relevant invitations for this new audience, Xbox had to infiltrate Instagram's highly-targeted shopping bubble. We took the top three shoppable categories on Instagram (shoes, technology, fashion) and created custom carousels displaying shoe, tech and fashion accessories from some of Xbox’s newest and most popular games. Introducing the new audience to Xbox through their own shopping interests.

Xbox wanted to reach a younger audience of gamers who are aging into more ‘serious’ gaming from mobile phones, tablets, etc. This Gen Z audience is passionate about shoes, tech, and fashion; and they spend a ton of time on Instagram. But they aren’t convinced Xbox is a brand for them. We needed to show them where their passions come to life in Xbox games. Using this information, and knowing that the most compelling way to find a new favorite is a friend’s recommendation, we identified Instagram as the way to communicate and connect with this new audience.

For this campaign, we created three unique, shoppable ads on Instagram featuring items that would appeal to Instagram’s top three shopping verticals: Fashion, Shoes, and Tech. At first glance, the sponsored posts appeared normal, but viewers who looked closer found that all items and descriptions were actually pulled directly from popular Xbox game titles. Each carousel featured fully-rotating, 3D models of each in-game item and product description copy that gave viewers a taste of the game itself. Clicking through took viewers to bespoke mobile landing pages which sold each Xbox game in the style of a shoppable product page for the in-game item.

With a limited media budget, our campaign drove 34M smart, targeted impressions to our target audience who aren’t yet fans of Xbox. These non-gamers tapped their way to spark of gaming passion you can see in the results.

The campaign drove:

View rates that were +25% over Xbox benchmark

Engagement rates that were +22% over benchmark

+186% increase in Xbox purchase intent