How Verizon harnessed a category pain point to send a powerful signal to gamers.
Sometimes cracking the audience is as important as cracking the creative idea. But where do you start when your audience is renowned for mocking brands that invade their subculture inauthentically? Madwell and Verizon share how they struck a chord with gamers, taking advantage of their presence on YouTube to speak to them in their own visual language.
Here Madwell Co-Founder and CCO Chris Sojka, Associate Creative Director Micky Treutlein, and Creative Director Ryan Howard, alongside Verizon’s Creative Marketing Manager Will Langenberg share some lessons they unlocked along the way.
1. Play where your audience plays
Speaking the language of your audience is important, but doing so in a place where they're listening raises the stakes even more. And with gaming making up a huge proportion of the content on YouTube, the team knew it was the perfect place to go big.
Chris Sojka, co-founder and CCO of Madwell, says of the initial mission, “We’re going to do something that blows everyone away, and we’re going to do it in a place where they naturally and organically consume content.”
Knowing they were in the right space for gamers meant the team not only had a captive audience, but the fun within the content could be tailored to their viewers.
2. Short scenes make a full-length story
It’s rare for a brief to ask for only one deliverable, so the versatility of assets is becoming a bigger focus for creative teams.
Sojka explains, “We conceptualized ‘The Reset’ as a modular ecosystem.” Ryan Howard, creative director at Madwell, adds, “We wanted to make this a very hardworking asset, so we could enter many conversations across the media buy.”
Creating a long-form film from a series of smaller scenes meant the content and messaging could flex in many ways. Leveraging shorter formats on YouTube meant Verizon was building connections with greater frequency.
3. Craft earns credit
Having permission to broach a subject with your audience often takes months or even years of priming, and even then you may be limited in what your brand can say. Knowing this, the team painstakingly crafted the film with dozens of Easter eggs and nuanced references to gaming culture.
Showing that Verizon understood the intricacies of gaming worlds gave them permission to speak to audiences about a specific pain point, the one solved by their 5G product: lag.
Getting an audience on your side will be an evergreen challenge for creatives and brands, especially as audiences become more aware of marketing messages. Which is why instead of just talking at your audience, getting down in the trenches with them can prove you understand what’s important to them. Doing so might just ensure that your brand equity doesn’t lag.
