In its latest advertising campaign, for the new game Devil May Cry, Capcom used targeted social media ads to engage with its audience through mobile devices in the U.K.
The campaign included organic tweets and posts on Twitter and Facebook, with the gaming company promoting several specific posts on both networks, targeted to current followers and fans via mobile devices. The ads featured game trailers, polls about aspects of the game (such as “what is your favorite weapon?”), and directed users to retailers with mobile-optimized sites that sold the game.
“Predominantly speaking, we tend to target 16- to 24-year-olds, maybe up to 28- or 30-year-olds,” said Craig Brown, UK product manager for Capcom. “This type of execution can run on other devices, whether it be tablet or desktop. But the key here is that our audience is on mobile, so that’s where we need to be.”
The campaign has been running for about a week and a half, Brown said, and is about halfway done. The results so far have been “encouraging,” he said, “much more than what we’ve seen from standard posts on Facebook and Twitter.” No specific results were available just yet.
The combination of the mobile and social elements with active, rich media-type ads has been key to getting fans participating with the content, he noted. Working with media buying agency Mindshare, Capcom was able to leverage mobile advertising company Celtra’s AdCreator 3 platform that focuses on providing a rich media experience as part of social media ads.
“The main goal was engagement,” Brown added. “On any of these social platforms, it’s always about engagement and the best way to do that is asking the users to get involved with the narrative. [For results], we are looking at engagement, first of all, then we looked at video views and then driving to retail.”
This campaign for Devil May Cry is the first mobile rich media execution on Twitter from Celtra and the first time the company has combined Facebook and Twitter in this type of social rich media program.
“The success of this combined Twitter and Facebook rich media campaign means brands now really enjoy the network effect benefits of targeting and quickly converting a much broader audience by becoming part of their trusted social circles,” said Jonathan Milne, general manager of Europe for Celtra, in a statement about the campaign.
“All of our major brands have their respective Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube accounts and that’s something we’ve put a lot of focus over the previous 12 months,” Brown said. “Looking forward, like many brands, we’ve got a huge eye on mobile and monitoring how and where our audience uses this type of media. What we’re focusing on now is making sure that everything we do is responsive to mobile on a social environment.”
