Case Study: BIC with EA

BIC won on their first interaction with the gamer audience. The popular ballpoint pens brand advanced to the next level by taking its “back to school” campaign to the most recognized and played videogames platform in the world.

ARGENTINA

BIC is a family business company, listed on the Paris stock exchange, and a world leader in the stationery, lighters and shavers industry. For more than 60 years BIC has lived up to the tradition of providing simple, ingenious, reliable and high-quality options for everyone, anytime and anywhere.

Challenge

Bic wanted to promote their Bic Fashion pens, with bright and striking colors such as pink, violet and turquoise among teenagers mainly focused on women. To do so, the brand sought to add new platforms to its media mix and impact its target audience with different messages and, thus, complement their actions taken on TV.

Solution

Bic’s media agency Reprise, from IPG Media Brands group, share with its client an innovative proposal to approach younger audiences. The objective was to interact with their audience at different moments during their consumer journey, so that they received the message in a friendly and non-intrusive manner.

For the first time, the brand developed a media strategy with videogame platforms and chose EA’s, the leading gaming platform. Therefore, they guarantee a great reach for their brand awareness campaign.

The right message to the right target audience, through an innovative format.

The campaign was run in different games, through EA 2, one of the most interactive ad formats within the platform. EA 2 offers rewards to gamers who goes through different advertising displays. Thus, the audience perceives the advertising message as part of the game, and not as an interruption of it.

Results

Keys of Success

Chosen Games

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The campaign reached an ideal VCR since the target audience was correctly segmented on EA. The games were selected based on their audience (students from 13 to 17 years old and their mothers) likeness. The chosen video games were: FIFA, Real Racing, Madden for the first group and more casual games such as Tetris, Sin City, Plants vs. Zombies for the cluster of mothers, who are the purchase decision makers.

EA 2 Ad Format

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Gamers do not like interruptions. EA 2, not only allows gamers to continuosly play, but at the same time it helps users to earn lives and other rewards to progress in the game, generating a remarkable brand loyalty with the advertising company.

An interesting fact: The AdReaction Video Creative in a Digital World study by Millward Brown (2017) shows that the mobile formats that offer this type of reward are those that have a greater positive perception on the part of the users (+ 49%).

Video Creativity

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The brand strictly followed EA best practices to achieve the best results. They adapted their ad creativity to the platform and its EA 2 format using a modular piece. Different video snippets were created for each pen ink color to show the product’s color variety.

Gisela Carricaburu

South Region Brand Manager
Bic

“We were looking to build brand awareness among teenagers. We trusted that our audience was in EA games. We tested and it worked very well, the results were fulfilled and we surpassed the benchmarks. We received very positive feedback about the campaign on our social media platforms and observed an increase in sales during the back to school period “