Challenge & Goals 

Video games have evolved significantly since their inception. Today, games have the ability to transport us to dynamic worlds with advanced on-screen action and stimuli. While this is an increasingly exciting time for gamers, it also means more is required from our bodies and brains to focus and play, giving rise to a new phenomenon: Gaming headaches. 80% of gamers believe gaming headaches are unavoidable, and as a result, play through the pain.  

Insights & Strategy 

This was an opportunity for Advil to demonstrate its leadership and expertise with this new kind of headache while building affinity within a specific community. To the 6 million gamers in Canada, gaming headaches can seem like an unavoidable price to play. Our goal was to show players of all levels that gaming headaches can be prevented through proactive and simple solutions.  

Gaming headaches are commonly caused by in-game factors like excessive brightness, motion sensitivity, audio levels, and more. Many of these in-game factors that cause headaches are factors that can be adjusted by gamers themselves—if they just know how.  

Execution 

We brought neuroscience and gaming together to tackle gaming headaches. We partnered with neuroscientist Dr. Séamas Weech to understand, through controlled gamer response data and neuroscience research, which unique settings combinations directly target visual stimulation that can lead to headaches, helping create a noticeable difference within the on-screen environment and reduce triggers that can impact headache symptoms and severity. We also partnered with the gaming community like pro streamer Michael Tash to identify the right settings adjustments to codify Advil Head Settings. Seven genre-based Head Settings guides were developed: RPG, Action RPG, MOBA, First-person shooter, Third-person shooter, Racing, and Sports.  

To launch, we developed a 2 and a half-minute docu-style OLV that explained gaming headaches and shared the expert research process before introducing Advil Head Settings. The OLV took on a nostalgic and playful tone, filled with several gaming references that would humor and engage audiences.  

Based on top channels favoured by gamers, the full-length 2 and a half-minute OLV was promoted on YouTube, with accompanying cutdowns shared across Advil Canada’s social channels, Twitch, Amazon, and Discord. In these places where gamers live, we made the settings easy to find and save for their next gaming session.  

The team also created a landing page, where gamers could download Advil Head Settings and access additional information on proactive tips to healthy gaming.  

To increase awareness, engagement, and adoption across the gaming community, we partnered with gaming influencers on Twitch to promote different Advil Head Settings based on the game they were known to play. While live, the influencers demonstrated to viewers the Advil Head Settings guide on their computer and adjusted their own settings in real-time before playing. This was also further promoted with an earned media strategy to connect with Canada’s tech and national media through an announcement release, interviews and opportunities to review Advil Head Settings.  

Advil was able to engage the gaming community in a unique and authentic way that successfully drove awareness of gaming headaches our simple, proactive solution for every gaming session, no pill required. From high engagement on the Twitch takeover sessions and content with creators, this purpose-led campaign was a steppingstone to future conversations in the gaming space.  

Results & Impact  

As a strategic and purpose-led campaign targeted at Canadian gamers, this campaign drove talkability across channels that gamers found relevant. With over 110 stories and +5M impressions in earned media and interviews with the likes of Tech veteran Marc Saltzman’s show Tech Talk, the campaign saw features in key tech outlets like Mobile Syrup, Console Creatures, to marketing stories that highlighted the pioneering and unique efforts by a pain relief brand. In total, we achieved over 66M total impressions.  

This impact was further amplified with positive sentiment and engagement on Twitch, IG, YouTube and the campaign’s landing page which allowed gamers to understand, interact and learn more about Advil Head Settings. The campaign saw an impressive 3.15% organic engagement rate that surpassed industry standards of 2% and over 14,000 clicks to the landing page website, generating over 5M social impressions across TikTok, Instagram and Twitch. We surpassed the campaign’s Twitch engagement benchmark by 400%. Through controlled surveys, we found 80% of gamers preferred Advil Head Settings to default settings, and awareness of Advil to fight gaming headaches increased 51% after seeing the campaign. This one-of-a-kind endeavor by Advil Canada to offer a proactive solution to reduce gaming headaches received a 100% positive sentiment and has paved the way to connecting with a growing gamer community in Canada.