Electronic Arts, the global game publisher, launched the tactical football game EA Sports FC Mobile on iOS and Android in the Middle East and North Africa, with Saudi Arabia as the target market. To build awareness at launch, EA SPORTS ran a TikTok campaign centred on an augmented reality Branded Effect.
The effect replicated the appearance of the game's Ultimate Team Pack cards, which players collect to build their in-game teams. Users could showcase themselves as if they were the featured players. AR Insider describes the campaign as letting users collect player packs and pose as their favourite players.
Campaign structure
EA SPORTS combined several TikTok branding solutions:
- Branded Effect: the card-pack effect users applied to their own videos.
- Spark Ads: used to amplify content from three influential sports creators who first showcased the effect to their audiences.
- Branded Mission: a TikTok format that crowdsources creator videos. Creators from football, sports and entertainment were encouraged to use the Branded Effect under the hashtag #انضم_للنادي ("join the club"), many wearing favourite-team jerseys or emulating player hairstyles and celebrations.
- TopView: used to broaden the campaign's reach.
Reported results
TikTok reports that the campaign generated 88.57 million video views across all campaign paid assets, surpassing the market benchmark.
On the Branded Mission hashtag, whose creators were encouraged to use the AR effect, TikTok reports:
- more than 424,000 hashtag engagements, likes, comments and shares
- over 3,800 videos created under the hashtag, higher than the market benchmark
