Why is this work relevant for Media?

EA Games launched Apex Legends in Japan by using media to amplify a creative idea that not only resonated with the local market but encouraged cocreation withing the gaming community. We leveraged the cultural insight that Japanese gamers value immersive stories and worlds. In partnership with local manga artists, we used media to tell the stories behind Apex Legends and encouraged gamers to reimagine the stories themselves via a UGC competition. Not only did the campaign garner mass attention for Apex Legends, it inspired everyday culture creators to unleash their creativity, generating further earned media and successfully attracting new players.

Background

In 2021 EA Games set out to launch Season Eight of Apex Legends, a first-person battle royale shooter game, in Japan. But even though first-person shooters are one of the most popular gaming genres globally, they are still niche in Japan, engaging just 15% of gamers. As well as this, Japanese gamers are fiercely loyal to homegrown brands and tend to prefer games by local giants Nintendo, Capcom and Square Enix. This posed a challenge for a global brand like EA looking to penetrate the Japanese market. The objective was to double the amount of Apex players in Japan. But to attract new players, not only did we need to rapidly grow interest in first person shooters, we needed to position Apex as a brand that felt locally relevant in order to be genuinely accepted.

Describe the creative idea / insights (30% of vote)

Our target 18-34 gaming audience is captivated by rich stories and expansive worlds. 82% of them are immersive story lovers with an interest in manga, anime, literature and film. To unlock local success for Apex Legends, it wasn’t enough to sell our gameplay. We needed to elevate the stories behind Apex Legends in an authentic way. To do this we turned to masters of the craft. We partnered with veteran Manga artist Atsushi Ohkubo to redesign our Apex Legends characters in his signature style and amplified his artwork across gaming websites to captivate our audience. We then encouraged our gaming audience to unleash their own creativity through a UGC competition, inviting them to immerse themselves in our Apex Legends universe and then reimagine it. To launch the competition we partnered with five emerging illustrators who each developed their own unique Apex Legends artworks to inspire more creations from the community.

Describe the strategy (20% of vote)

To grow local interest in first-person shooters and local love for Apex legends, our strategy was to Transform Stories into Local Legends. We needed to elevate the character storylines from the Apex Legends universe into local legends that our audience would love to share within their social circles. To do this our strategy was two pronged. Firstly, we needed to pull in and engage our gaming audience where they already love to tell and share stories, tapping into existing online gaming communities and using manga influencers to spread our local legends. Secondly, for a new game launch in a new market we needed to generate mass reach and awareness of Apex Legends with push comms activity. But we couldn’t simply shout loudly with global assets in above the line media. To be authentic we needed to amplify the local legends we had cocreated with our gaming audience.

Describe the execution (20% of vote)

To reach our gaming audience, we partnered with IGN Japan to develop and amplify our local legends content. Ohkubo’s artwork was featured in native articles, high impact display and video content across IGN and other top gaming community websites Famitsu, 4Gamer and Gamespark. A dedicated campaign microsite was also created to house our UGC competition and showcase local influencer illustrations. We then extended the Ohkubo partnership from the screen to the streets to deliver even more scale, showcasing his artwork in high reaching outdoor media. We focused on large, consecutive outdoor placements in iconic Shibuya Station, where up to three million people every day could literally walk alongside the Apex Legends characters that Ohkubo had reimagined. With the hands of a manga legend, paired with smart media targeting, we transformed our Apex stories into local legends. The campaign ran for eight weeks, coinciding with the game’s launch in February 2021.

List the results (30% of vote)

The campaign was a huge success. The artistic re-imaginations from Ohkubo drove significant attention, helping Apex Legends trend on Twitter on the day of launch. Paid media amplification across IGN, gaming websites and outdoor delivered mass reach with over 13 million total impressions. Not only that, our UGC competition generated over 150 additional artworks from fans and drove further organic sharing on Twitter and Reddit, enabling us to infiltrate online communities that aren’t usually advertising friendly. We achieved over 99,000 social engagements with a 41% engagement rate. The artwork created was so popular that Respawn, the developers of Apex Legends, are now exploring repurposing the user generated artworks for in game loading screens and merchandise. We smashed our targets with the campaign resulting in a 194% increase in new Apex Legends players in Japan. We also grew daily active users by 53%.

Please tell us about the cultural insight that inspired the work

Pop culture and entertainment in Japan is dominated by immersive stories filled with fantastic worlds and complex characters. You just need to watch a Ghibli Studio film to understand the craftsmanship. The history of gaming is no different. It’s why many successful games in Japan use well-crafted narratives and unique characters to keep their communities engaged. 82% of our target 18-34 gaming audience are immersive story lovers with an interest in manga, anime, literature and film. With that in mind, we knew that in order to unlock local success for Apex Legends we needed to tell the stories behind the game in an authentic and immersive way.