The Campaign

In Korea, There's an overwhelming sense of helplessness for what is perceived as a lack of opportunity and also growing frustration with the 'Pressure of establishment' among Korean youth. Knowing this, we thought carefully about how Google Play could use its magic to authentically tap into this social challenge and help Korea's youth achieve its dream. Google Play has been hosting indie game festival event, where developers can showcase their own indie games. We have encountered lots of indie game developers and inspired by their passion, innovation, and creativities behind the game making. We wanted to deliver these values to users, that young people can resonated themselves with the developers, and get inspired by their challenges and success with Google Play. Therefore, we created documentary films of Indie games by passionate young Korean game developers. To strengthen the sincerity of story, We invited a developer himself into the film.

Creative Execution

In Korea, the term “Indie” is used in diverse positive context to describe the spirit of adventure, creativity, and innovation led by the young generation. Indie Games are gaining more popularity, attracting gamers who are bored with highly commercialized and standardized mainstream games. Google Play Korea has been hosting the event called "Indie game festival", which young indie developers can showcase their new games, and get exposed to industry stakeholders. It was developer only event, but from 2017, Google Play opened it to public and create opportunities for indie developers to interact with gamers. Along with this event, as gaming platform, we presented inspiring stories of “Indie” developers that would resonate with young people in Korea. We delivered the message of “Google Play supports young Koreans to be inspired with full of “Indie” spirit and to "Enjoy a fun & innovative games byIndie developers". The creatives were composed of 3 short documentaries series of Indie game developers in Korea. Out of 3 films, “Dream of Whale” follows the journey of former architect SH Kim, from his monotonous corporate job to live as an 'indie' game developer in a cramped basement office. This YouTube film demonstrates the active role Google Play plays in supporting 'indie' developers, let them realize their vision in a global setting, and craft their own indie game. The major targets are young Koreans we leveraged YouTube and Social channel to reach our target users for one month. The campaign has reached to 15M views in YouTube, with 1.2M social organic reach. We discovered brand message around “young entrepreneurship” or “Indie” or “Open platform” are highly resonating themes to Korea millennials and very relevant for Google Play brand to engage users emotionally and enhance brand love by +6.6% brand favorability uplift. +110 articles covered from Major PR.