Frank’s has always been a very passion-led brand with a tremendous loyal following and Frank’s users (as the tagline goes) put that $#!T on everything! While Frank’s continues to grow dollar share, there is an increased competitive pressure (specifically in the frozen wings segment). Smaller brands are entering the category and larger players like Buffalo Wild Wings continue to gain distribution and grow share. Driving household penetration and awareness of Frank’s Buffalo Boneless Chicken Bites was critical for the brands’ success. Frank’s RedHot® wanted to harness the love and passion for the brand with other passion areas in our consumers’ lives – Sports & Gaming.

With the promise of audience reach and attention within intrinsic in-game advertising, and its significant impact on purchase intent, we partnered with Frank’s RedHot® to launch their first intrinsic in-game advertising campaign.

In order to appeal to gamers, in-game advertising creative must be concise, yet memorable. Through our detailed creative guidelines to ensure brands design their advertisements to be authentic in the game through the use of high-quality imagery, prominent logos, and catchy copy, Frank’s RedHot® simplified their standard display ads to focus on high-quality snack food images and playful copy. As opposed to in-game advertising that might pause the game to show an ad, intrinsic in-game advertising is shown during the actual gameplay and doesn't disrupt the experience of the game. Many gamers note intrinsic in-game advertising provides realism to gameplay, thus more authentically resonating with gamers and protecting their gaming experience.

This campaign was not only the first intrinsic in-game advertising campaign for Frank’s RedHot®, but a first for the category and the start of a larger gaming strategy for McCormick.

Unlike typical web-based display ads, intrinsic in-game advertising is designed to complement the gaming environment and enhance the gamer experience. As a result, Frank’s created ads that enticed the gamer for snacks in a way that is respectful to the game, with little copy and no clickable call to action.

Globally, mobile phones hold the #1 spot as the most popular gaming device. In an effort to scale the mobile gaming audience, a budget of $81,000 was allocated to mobile devices exclusively. When the campaign concluded, approximately 64% of ads were viewed on an Apple iOS and 36% on Android devices.

Throughout the flight, Frank’s RedHot® reached the untapped, coveted mobile gaming audience authentically. We targeted male and female gamers between ages 25 - 54 across the United States who play games rated Everyone, Everyone 10+, Teen, and Mature with genres including action, adventure, casual, indie, racing, role playing, simulation, strategy, and sports.

Utilizing our industry-leading in-game and analytics technology, Frank’s RedHot® ads appeared intrinsically in video game environments, a first in their category. These display ads delivered 16.4MM impressions across the partner’s network, driving high reach as well as lift in aided awareness and mobile ad recall. Placing ads within an intrinsic in-game environment was key for Frank’s RedHot® to authentically reach their target audience since gaming and snacking go hand-in-hand.

The success of Frank’s RedHot® first intrinsic in-game advertising campaign influenced the larger gaming strategy for McCormick.

Delivering 16M+ impressions, the campaign significantly delivered, causing our achieved CPM to come in at -20% vs benchmark with 100% viewability. A Comscore Brand Lift Study showed that Frank’s RedHot® saw double-point brand lift across all major categories and outperformed all benchmarks, including aided awareness (+38.7 pts), mobile ad recall (+20.2 pts), fit as a game sponsor (+22.7 pts), likeness of Frank’s RedHot® sponsorship in games (+32.2 pts), and likelihood to purchase the condiment (+26.7 pts).

In industry leading attention research, Frank’s RedHot® produced 1.4x more attention of gamers vs the norm and performed similarly to social in-feed video norms and outperformed every other social, web, and mobile formats, including social in-feed image. This strong performance, on-par or surpassing other attention-grabbing advertising tactics, proves that the campaign served as an attention-driver for Frank's.