The Requirement

When PC World (along with its partner AMD through the ATi brand) went looking for a partner to deliver their Christmas message and present their brands to the hardcore gaming audience, they found Heaven Media the perfect partner.

With direct access to a collection of gaming communities running in to the hundreds of thousands and a tournament specific website (www.esportsheaven.com) Heaven Media were able to provide PC World and their branding partner ATi with the optimum solution, tailored to their needs and a unique way of reaching their target audience of 18 to 25 year old gamers.

The Solution

With the run up to Christmas requiring increased brand awareness from gamers towards PC World and ATi, esportsheaven.com ran a cash based tournament for the hugely popular Call of Duty Modern Warfare game (13 million units sold worldwide according to Activision).

The tournament garnered all of Heaven Media’s power in advertising and word spread quickly throughout the group sites and beyond. Initially the cup was open to the best 64 teams in Europe, however due to sign ups being full in less than 24 hours, the cup was extended to allow 128 teams. Even with this extension, the cup filled up within 2 days. With over 700 players and 200 hours of game play time logged from the tournament, exposure through the tournament was huge.

The tournament ran from 16th December up to Christmas and then resumed with the final being played on January 3rd to maximise exposure to the brand, both up to and including Christmas and the New Year sales period.

The Coverage

In addition to the league site, Heaven Media also deployed highly skilled journalists from their content teams at www.cadred.org and www.tek-9.org to cover every angle of the tournament as it was played out, complete with match reports, score updates, live streaming links, interviews with players, previews of upcoming matches and daily updates via news posts. Combined, the two sites draw in over 1.5million page views per week with over 150,000 unique readers exposed to the PC World Cup.

Proving the draw Heaven Media has within the hardcore gaming market, the cup attracted the very best teams in the business and from a wide area of the United Kingdom and Europe. Reports and updates were also posted beyond our own group sites to large team inspired sites and smaller news reporting sites.

Coverage was also provided through live commentary and a live video stream, providing fans the ultimate way of viewing the grand final, which attracted more viewers than a regular lower league football match would!

There were over 18 different sites that carried news, results and coverage of the PC World Cup, reaching an estimated 500,000 unique readers.

Social Networking & Media

The impact of social network sites like Facebook and Twitter were also fully utilised by Heaven Media and extended to players and managers and fans of the teams also adding their own updates via the social networks throughout the tournament.

Heaven Media believe it is essential to get your message out there to as wider audience as possible, which is why they fully utilise social networking and media sites.

Branding

All of the cup logos including prominent placement of the PC World logo, which was displayed in three different areas of the esportsheaven.com site including an MPU, Leaderboard and Sidebar block. In addition, every page of the cup is branded with a large cup banner which also included a prominently placed PC World logo.

Beyond the tournament site, wherever the cup was written about, the cup logo was used, thus further branding awareness increased.

Whenever the cup was written about, either on a Heaven Media site or otherwise, PC World was always used in the written form as the title of the cup, giving even further brand awareness and value for money.

In addition, both the logo and the name of the cup were used frequently in the online video broadcast, much in the same way as a football match would be on Sky “Super Sunday Soccer with Ford” for example.

Statistics & Achievements

• 200 hours of game play completed through the tournament.
• 18 websites carried news of the event.
• More viewers than an average League 2 football match on the live video cast.
• Full coverage on two of Europe’s biggest eSport sites with exposure to over 150,000 people.
• Combined exposure to over half a million gamers.
• 700+ top gamers competing in the tournament alone.
• Many of Europe’s finest players and teams competed.
• Diverse collection of gamers with teams from every single major European nation and some even further afield, Estonia, Czech Republic, Belarus and Turkey for example.
• Huge brand exposure to the right target audience.

Reporting

In addition to all of these services, Heaven Media also provides every customer with a full report on the solution they offer; including an ROI report detailing everything you could possibly need, to assess the impact of the campaign and PC World was no different.