It’s Madden Season – A music video featuring gamers’ favorite celebrities, athletes and pop culture references. It starred Kevin Hart and Dave Franco engaging in the ultimate Madden rivalry. The two traded trash talk and pranks, before sitting down to play Madden during a party in which Franco’s house burns down. ?

Madden GIFERATOR – During every NFL game, the Madden GIFERATOR fused live NFL data with Madden 15 game footage to generate a live stream of GIFS that were personalized to fans based on their favorite teams. Fans were also able to create and send their own rivalry-themed GIFs.

Within the first few weeks, the Madden Season campaign greatly exceeded all expectations + EA’s wildest dreams:

- Madden Season earned 36MM views (to-date) on Facebook and YouTube

- Giferator was the #4 most searched-for GIF on Google, just after Frozen

- 618,880 animated GIFs were created by fans

- Sales went up 14% while category sales declined 13%

- Madden 15 experienced its best sales year in franchise history, becoming the #2 selling game of 2014

Madden NFL is the most successful (American) football franchise in video game history. But after 25 years, Madden had lost relevance among a prominent group of younger gamers (12-24).

Madden’s core consumers are guys who love to compete. For them, video games come down to one thing: feeding the need to win. And every win is an opportunity to take to social media to brag about their epic victories. Playing Madden with friends turns a competition into a rivalry, and these rivalries increase the stakes of every match. This insight inspired our strategy: Rivalry Elevates Everything.

We extended rivalry across our target’s interests online and throughout the entire NFL season by creating Madden Season—an over-the-top music video featuring an epic rivalry between Kevin Hart and Dave Franco—and an interactive GIF creator that our audience could use to spread trash talk across the Internet.