The Brief
Holiday is a critical moment for EA Sports but they aren’t alone; it is a noisy and cluttered time of the year when standing out is hard.
Our challenge was two-fold: incentivise a passionate and dedicated fanbase whilst encouraging lapsed players to return to the game.
With six limited edition Next Generation in-game player cards being launched over the Christmas period, our job was to showcase the young footballers behind the cards, educating existing players and bringing the game culture to new fans.
With football normally reserved for the back pages, we wanted to ensure that EA’s Next Generation was creating front page headlines. So we decided to write the headlines ourselves…
The COPA90 Approach
The Next Generation
We brought to life digital and physical worlds by creating a throwback to a bygone football culture where player news came through offline channels: The Next Generation Newspaper.
Each limited edition newspaper focused on one of our six hero athletes - each specifically identified to engage with audiences across key markets - featuring a 4-page spread for each athlete, with in-depth articles, quiz questions, editorial imagery and advertisements for the holiday promotional offer.
Our special edition newspapers were distributed across Europe and America, connecting the new digital generation of football fans to the rich generations of yesteryear by immortalising some of the most talented footballers in FIFA in collectible physical memorabilia.
The Outcome
EA Sports most successful holiday campaign ever
The campaign saw over 14,000 papers distributed in total across the key markets. Media investment drove significant over-delivery in a number of key metrics, including over 25m impressions across social through owned and partner channels.
More importantly, FIFA 22 daily users were up 10% YoY during the campaign, with an additional 10% increase in new players, resulting in this being EA Sports FIFA’s most successful holiday campaign ever.
14K
newspapers distributed
+10%
increase in daily users YoY
25M
social impressions
+10%
increase in new players
“We loved this campaign. It was a simple, direct and football fluent vehicle to communicate with an audience that we typically only enjoy a digital relationship with.” VP, EA Sports