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#GameOn

How one social media feud made poker cool again
Client
Campaign

#GameOn

What we did

Talent
Digital
Reach

Launch date

January 2018

The strategy

After a heyday in the noughties, poker has lost its lustre. Interest in the game has been waning, and with so many more immersive gaming experiences at hand, young adult audiences aren’t getting it.

We needed to demonstrate just how compelling poker could be to a new mobile-first generation.

An insight unlocked a big play for us. At the heart of poker is the spirit of competitiveness, the desire to outwit and outsmart an opponent. And in the real world, these instincts have a found a new stage to play out on: that of social media.

Social was where these outwitting battles and behaviours came to life. And the best of these was the celebrity social media beef.

The idea

#GameOn was an awareness-generating campaign, so our primary success metric was social reach. It was clear that the social duel element would live or die by the influencer casting. Our wishlist was ambitious: natural smarts, a competitive spirit, global reach and affinity with mainstream male audiences. And beyond this, to maintain the authenticity of the campaign, they needed a real reason to be duelling.

After intensive social listening, we cast Kevin Hart and Usain Bolt. Both had brilliant entertainment sensibilities that would help them really inhabit their roles as social media opponents. Their height differential brought an element of visual comedy that couldn’t be lost in translation for non-English speaking markets. Even better, they’d once had a friendly disagreement over a NBA basketball race in 2013, so the feud conceit had real life roots. Let the battle commence.

The results

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