The Campaign

Google Play Town is a real world incarnation of the Google Play Store. It brought the Play Store to the real world in one colourful giant hub, accompanied with a series of high visibility street activations. The gamified street activations were designed to have people experience mobile games in their everyday lives in surprising contexts. The largest individual activations was a tie up across 5000 7/11 stores where people got rewarded when they engaged through a mobile game. We leveraged the equity of massive game titles and characters to build awareness of the Google Play Town event situated at Taipei 101. The real world Play Store also enabled us to activate people with real world mobile face offs and live YouTube streams with local celebrities, reaching audiences across the country. All this combined enabled us to invite the press over several times over the month long event.

Execution

Google Play Town was a month long Real World Play Store event in the heart of Taipei. It featured 50 developers with 70+ titles. To drive awareness, a series of street activations in high footfall locations across Taipei captured people’s attention where they are. The most significant of the gamified street activations was an islandwide tie up across 5000+ 7/11 outlets. At the event space, a YouTube studio broadcast celebrity gaming head-to-heads, expanding our reach to those who could not make it to the event. Different zones catered to different tastes: Innovation zone allowed people to geek out on new tech, the family zone had chill out spaces and screened movies whilst hardcore and casual gamers alike could play the latest titles in a fun and collaborative space. During the month, we invited the press to cover game launches and other aspects of the event several times each week.

- Total PR Clippings: a total of 303 clippings, including 24 features on TV news and shows. - 60K visits to the physical PlayTown hub - 100 000 mobile gaming participants at 7/11 stores - 1M+ live stream views on YouTube - 1M+ visits to the PlayTown microsite - 12.5% growth in unaided awareness of Google Play store as a digital content destination vs. 1% increase in Apple App Store in same period (before/after campaign) - 7.6% growth in "innovative" brand attribute, 13.2% in "inspiring", and 11.8% in "cool" (people who have been to PlayTown vs. not, after campaign)

The Situation

People of Taiwan love mobile games. However, they rarely talk about games with their friends. This means they tend to stick to the games they are familiar with. That’s why we needed a way to maximize buzz around mobile gaming. Google PlayTown was a month long event that brought the Google Play Store to the real world and mobile games to the streets where people could experience the fun of new games themselves. The entire event was designed to maximize PR opportunities to give it scale and to spread the notion that everyone is participating.

The Strategy

Google Playtown is designed to bring mobile gaming into the real world to create a social and mainstream experience. Based on the insight that despite high mobile and category penetration people tended to game by themselves, play the same games and not share their experiences, the over-arching strategy focused on creating an event that brought the vast array of games and entertainment that Play Store offers to life in a way that appeals to casual gamers, hardcore gamers and newbies alike. The approach to executing activations in and outside of the event space gave Play Town mass appeal balanced with bespoke interests for specific target groups and gave us reasons to invite the press over several times over the course of the month long event.