We created a real-life transfer saga for the virtual world to launch FIFA 14 for Xbox. We were tasked to challenge perceptions of PlayStation as the home of FIFA and demonstrate the benefits of playing FIFA 14 on Xbox.

Our insight was that players of FIFA Ultimate Team (FUT, the online version of FIFA) were deeply passionate about their virtual players and teams. And Xbox has 42 exclusive virtual players available in the game. So we decided to blur the lines between the virtual and the real in an interactive, multi-lingual transfer saga.

We brought superstar Ruud van Nistelrooy out of retirement and set 4 weekly challenges to Xbox gamers: show us your FIFA skills via uploaded gaming footage to win him in your Ultimate Team.

We used influencers to set weekly challenges in which gamers had to demonstrate their FIFA skills, uploaded to a campaign hub, Playlikealegend.com, where fans could watch clips and download a trial of the game.

The results were amazing, 250 unique global news coverage, 421m earned media impressions, over 3.3m views of campaign videos and 287k visits to the campaign microsite. It was a PR campaign with social and digital at its core. It understood the powerful interplay between owned and earned media channels and challenged perceptions of Xbox in a way that was authentic and exciting. Crucially, it proved that Xbox understood the gaming community and demonstrated why you should play FIFA 14 on Xbox.

Our strategy sparked an interesting thought: what if one of our FIFA legends actually came out of retirement? How far would gamers go to sign a legend to join their team?

We decided to find out.

We brought superstar Ruud van Nistelrooy out of retirement – creating a real-life transfer saga for the virtual world. Ruud kicked off the campaign with a series of curious tweets (during the January Transfer Window), sparking global speculation and debate. We then announced Ruud’s official comeback in a press conference and set 4 weekly challenge to gamers – show us your FIFA skills via uploaded gaming footage to win him in your Ultimate Team. Only for Xbox players, of course!

What followed was an interactive, multi-lingual transfer saga involving the gaming community at every step. We used key influencers to set our challenges, name-checked weekly winners in the narrative and used real-world media outlets to make the whole campaign seem as real to our gamers as FUT is.

Our results totally surpassed pre-campaign expectations - Over 7,000 in-game footage uploads from our target audience of existing players (our KPI was 4,000). The best-uploaded videos were shared with the global gaming community. Secondly, we had 35,000 people click through and redeem ‘Gold’ starter packs for FIFA Ultimate Team (55% of them had never played before, therefore attracting 19,250 new Xbox FUT players). Finally, with over 3.3 million video views, 287,000 unique visits to the PLAL website and 421 earned media impressions it was clear we truly engaged the world and built new relationships.