This work is relevant for Direct because it targeted a new, more mainstream audience for games, and gave them the first ever new call-to-action for the sector – a CTA that would directly appeal to them. The response the idea sought was not to play games, but to visit them as tourist destinations. The centrepiece was a ground-breaking partnership with Rough Guides (a world-leading travel publisher) which opened up a new level of engagement possibilities with games.

Although Xbox is an established brand amongst the gaming community, there was still a need to expand brand affinity beyond its hard-core audience. For a brand that believes gaming should be for all, the main objective was to target a new audience who didn’t care about action and weapons in videogames, which traditionally was the focal point of videogame marketing.

We created a new call-to-action for the gaming market. Don’t play. Visit.

Because games had become so beautiful and detailed, we began promoting them as genuine travel destinations. In a ground-breaking partnership with one of the world’s leading travel publishers, we created The Rough Guide to Xbox – the first travel guide for virtual worlds. This enabled people to engage with games in a new way, building brand affinity with a whole new audience. The transformation was completed with a range of online and offline multi-channel activations that all made people perceive video games as viable tourist destinations – particularly useful after Covid-19 hit and travel restrictions were put in place.

To target a new mainstream audience, tech benefits of Xbox like 4K, HDR, and 60 FPS wouldn’t resonate, and neither would the conventions of videogame advertising like action and weapons.

We had to get people to appreciate the richness of Xbox's games without talking about gameplay. So the major strategic shift, moving from the rational to the emotional, was to unlock a new, previously untapped side to games to give them a new reason to buy. Graphics had evolved to such an extent, and game worlds had become so vast, that we could now think of them not as things to play, but as places to visit.

The Rough Guide to Xbox - the first travel guide for virtual worlds – was the centrepiece of a wide-scale new campaign to make people experience a leading gaming brand, as a travel brand. People could use it to now navigate games in a way they never had before.

Launched in January 2020 at a major travel expo, sold online, and amplified with films, OOH, in-game guided tours based on the book, console bundles re-framed as vacation packages, a gaming photography exhibition, video call backgrounds and much more – this was a campaign that started well before Covid-19 but gained added utility once the world could no longer travel.

- Debuted in 29 countries and counting

- 4x average response rate

- 55% traffic increase

- 67% above average engagement rate