Cannes Lions: Artistic Director Candice Badin explains her favorite campaign

The use of gamification in communication is an attempt to capitalise on the engagement generated by games. However, simply extracting a mechanism from a video game and injecting it into a marketing strategy is not enough to recreate similar engagement, and most brands that venture into this area do so clumsily. With millions of people spending hours a day on video games, capturing the essence of this practice is an opportunity to penetrate people’s habits to create truly powerful experiences.

And who better to bring the game to life than an entertainment giant like Xbox. The « The Everyday Tactician » which won a Cannes Lions award, talks to players about what drives them deeply: passion, strategy, perseverance, analyzing and managing a situation, competitiveness, etc. To sum up the ingenious scheme, Xbox took the realism of the team management simulation game Football Manager 24 a step further by proposing to break down the boundaries of video games: one of the players would have the opportunity to become a real tactician for 5 months within the National League team Bromley FC. After several months of competition, it was Nathan Owolabi who got the job and proved the relevance of the whole scheme by helping Bromley to the best season in their history.

It’s a fine demonstration of the impact that the virtual world can have on the real world, when very often the scenarios that intertwine these two universes give rise to dystopian visions. Xbox’s treatment of the subject is totally positive. Beyond this success, the campaign gives the younger generation exactly what they want: it shows the success of a man who is recruited for his talent and passion. It was a bold gamble, but a fine demonstration of confidence, a notion we all want to rediscover in a society that sometimes loses it.

Hats off to this deeply human campaign, which shines as much for its concept as for its 360° execution.