IM Pool

Background

As the title sponsor of the Guinness 9-Ball Tour, Guinness needed to own pool. Pool and Guinness had to be linked in a way that created maximum buzz and impact among the brand's target audience, whilst simultaneously raising awareness of the ongoing Guinness 9-Ball Tour. The main objective was to promote a passion for pool and establish its link with Guinness, but another was to drive Guinness membership recruitment. Pool suffered from low interest, and was perceived as old and uncool. It needed a 21st Century update to reach Guinness' Internet-savvy target audience. Among this group, online games aren't top-of-mind. Their main online interests are chatting, emailing, and using social networking sites. Online advertising is viewed with suspicion. These obstacles had to be overcome in order to engage this group in an online pool challenge.

Idea

Generally, pool is played in friendly competition and as a means of social interaction. The campaign transferred these attributes to the online social setting, enabling people to play pool while chatting. For the first time in Asia, a real-time, peer-to-peer game was developed and placed on Windows Live Messenger for advertising purposes. This approach had the advantage of introducing an online pool challenge through a Windows Live Messenger user's own friends. This worked much better than conventional online channels as it is less perceived as 'advertising'. Furthermore, every time users invited their friends to play a game of pool, it activated a built-in viral effect.

Banners and emails featured the iconic Windows Live Messenger symbol, strengthening the idea of playing the Guinness branded game while chatting. A dedicated microsite and live leaderboard kept players engaged and competitive. In order to ensure a seamless user experience, the agency worked with MSN to create a One-Click Game Launch from the online banner ads. This was another industry first - allowing interested users to directly access their Windows Live Messenger application and play the game immediately. Visit the microsite here: www.guinness.com.my/live/gateway.aspx

Results

Although 34 million impressions were booked, more than 36 million impressions were served, achieving more than 99,000 clicks (of which 83% were unique). 358,708 games were played by 220,984 unique players (representing 35% penetration of the total targeted audience). More than 15,000 registrations were achieved, exceeding the target by 50%. 29.1% of players played for more than 20 minutes in total, and 78% played for more than 3 minutes. Best of all was the positive reaction from the blogosphere, encouraging other Microsoft Live Messenger users to try the game out for themselves.

Target Audience

Metropolitan, white collar men aged primarily between 18 and 35. Their main online interests are chatting, emailing, and using social networking sites. Online advertising is viewed with suspicion.

Size

There are 2.1 million Windows Live Messenger users across Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. Of this number, 630,000 users are in the bull's-eye target profile. This campaign reached 220,984 of them.

Our Thoughts

The genius of this campaign is that it’s embedded into the very tool used by people to communicate instantly with online friends. Using banners ads and e-mail to automatically set up games is an ingenious concept, but the fact that the branded software is sitting on the user’s desktop (and is ridiculously addictive) is this campaign’s crowning glory.