Every November, 50 000 gamers travel to tiny Jönköping in the south of Sweden for the massive Dreamhack computer gaming event.

And since the tiny town has a train station, SJ Swedish Railways wanted to remind the gamers, a young and important target group, to take the train to the event.

However, we needed to find and target the gamers in a smart and efficient way - and flatter them into taking the train instead of renting a car or going by bus. And since SJ already had booked a general banner campaign, we decided to hijack our own campaign.

Gamers have a unique bond with their computers. It's their life, their weapon, their job, their love. And there is one clear way to identify gamers – through the graphics card on their computer. If you're a hardcore gamer, you're going to have one of the best graphics cards on the market installed - otherwise, you can't play.

So, we injected a code (it's basically a cookies-thing) into SJ's regular banner campaign that was already scheduled. If the banner detected a true gamer's graphics card, the banner changed into a custom message about taking the train to Dreamhack, written in gaming lingo.

By knowing our target group and realizing the opportunity and information the cookies could give us, we were able to target gamers with almost 100% accuracy.

The general autumn/winter banner-campaign had media space on almost all major websites in Sweden (SJ is one of the biggest marketers in the country). This gave us reach and opportunity.

The code was implemented into the 25-30 unique banners featured in the price/product campaign, e.g. Stockholm–Gothenburg 195:- These banners appeared hundreds of times during the campaign's active weeks.

When a gamer's graphics card was detected, the banner turned into a computerized black and white message written in gaming lingo, e.g:

NE1 WTB train tickets 2 DH? SJ WTS @ sj.se all hubs -> Jnkpng fr 195 SEK L8r.

We simply gathered data in the banner to find hardcore gamers through their graphics card - and gave them a tailored message: Take the train to Dreamhack!

The Dreamhack weekend was a success for SJ Swedish Railways with sold out round trips to sleepy Jönköping all Thursday evening and all Friday.

SJ Prio - the loyalty program - saw an increase of members in the target group (young adults 18-29) by 250% at the time of the event.

The campaign was the most talked about at Dreamhack last year.