Situation:

The gaming market is a complex, highly competitive arena for brands where the target audience is highly sceptical to traditional commercial messages. For our client Lenovo it is even more challenging, as their budget is nowhere near some of our competitors.

The Brief:

Lenovo wants to market their gaming line of hardware in social media and at gaming events. Our main mission is to create engagement with the brand from the target group.

As gaming is a very hard and competitive industry with an audience that is extremely selective we were asked to, with limited resources and budget, create awareness and activation online around Lenovo’s gaming equipment ‘Legion’ on our market, true to the brand values “Different is better”. Our main markets are Sweden and Finland, but the campaign has become a global success with new markets everywhere.

Objective:

The target audience is young gamers 18-30 yrs.

When every tech brand is looking to promote the next AR or VR invention we looked the other way and embodied Lenovos brand tagline “Different is better” in a new shape and form. We created a vehicle with pensioners as gamers that are the opposite of what the target group normally encounters and look up to. Our veteran strategy was then launched in two more markets; Finland and Russia and we created a battle between the Swedish Silver Snipers and the Finnish Grey Gunners. The teams of elderly gamers became a success in the gaming community, not because of their skills but for the sake of trying and bringing people closer together. A digitally overloaded group got connected with the "digital underclass". Grandmothers started playing with grandchildren. The teams got recognition in mainstream media as the Silver Snipers, Grey Gunners and Iron Legion proved that gaming is for everyone.

Insight :

When looking at e-sports, the fastest growing sport in the world, we found that it as a culture attracts mainly young men (10:1 ratio 2018), both playing and following, excluding not only women, but also older people.

But gaming really isn’t about physical strength or about who you are or where you’re from. Anyone should be able to take part. And we decided to prove it in such a way that it would strengthen Lenovo’s brand in the e-sport community by creating a series of Counter Strike Teams only consisting of elderly people. This way, we could infiltrate the gaming community by actually taking part.

Key message:

Lenovo's brand line is "Different is better" and we wanted to show that by embracing different - gaming is for everyone.

Target audience:

Young gamers 18-30

Assets:

A series of senior teams in digital channels and live events.

Implementation / timeline:

We saw an opportunity to reach right into the heart of the gaming community by entering our campaign vehicle at one of the biggest gaming events of the year in Sweden, using it as a springboard for our campaign. Instantly it spread around the world, among the hardcore gaming fans and out into the general public only aided by a website and some social media posts. So we launched another team in Finland working around the clock in social media and repeated the success on that market and generating media. Step three was to have the two teams battle it out as a "nation vs nation" via Twitch which attracted 70.000 views only aided by a few social media posts. Step four was a re-match at a gaming event in Sweden followed by a world tour with various events. Step five, the launch of more teams.