The Estonian Football Association (EFA) serves as the central organization responsible for the development, management, and promotion of football across Estonia. In line with its mission to foster a deeper connection with football enthusiasts, the EFA embarked on a campaign designed to introduce a fresh approach to fan engagement. The objective was to create an interactive and enjoyable experience that would not only capture the attention of existing followers but also attract new audiences to the EFA’s content and initiatives.
To achieve this, the campaign targeted individuals with a strong connection to Estonian football, leveraging the their primary digital platform, its official website, as a significant traffic source. The initiative was further amplified through a multi-channel advertising strategy that included social media, newsletters, outdoor media screens, website pop-ups, and banner ads.
To further enhance the connection to Estonian football, the game featured Karl Jakob Hein, the national team goalkeeper who had recently made headlines by signing with Arsenal. As the game’s protagonist, Hein’s role was to defend the goal, creating a dynamic and relatable experience for fans. This choice not only tied the game directly to a prominent figure in Estonian football but also capitalized on Hein’s growing popularity, making the campaign even more appealing to the target audience.
As an incentive for participation, the EFA offered a prize every true fan of Estonian football can recognise: a signed jersey from Karl Jakob Hein. This reward aimed to drive engagement and provide fans with a tangible connection to the national team, making the campaign both exciting and rewarding for participants.
The primary objective of this gamified campaign was to foster community engagement and ensure that participants had an enjoyable experience. With this in mind, the campaign screens were strategically designed to be accessible to all visitors, allowing them to dive straight into the gameplay without any initial barriers. The decision to ask for contact details after playing the game ensured a seamless entry into the experience, reducing friction and encouraging wider participation. Those who wished to engage further had the option to fill out a form, which would enable them to appear on the leaderboard and enter a raffle for a chance to win the campaign’s grand prize.
Given that this was the Estonian Football Association’s first-ever gamified campaign, we supported them throughout the process (yes, on-demand consultation calls are still included with your license, feel free to book one). Adact has an extensive library of over 40 unique game types. These game types offer the flexibility to create more than 70 unique mechanics through customizable rules and settings, allowing for a wide range of creative possibilities.
Despite the vast array of options, the EFA quickly narrowed down the choices to branded minigames that would align with their vision. The “Drop Game” was ultimately selected as the ideal format, offering a straightforward and engaging football-themed challenge. The game was designed with simplicity in mind, making it easy for participants of all ages and skill levels to enjoy!
There is no “right” way to design the Drop game – it just has to feel good!
A fine balance between competence and competition always works – easy at start and gradually more complex. Here’s an example of settings:
Defend the goal as long as you can, but to make things
more interesting – don’t catch the Flaming balls!
3 types of footballs are moving towards the goal:
When asking about feedback from the community, the answer was brief: “People were hooked!” That will do. Backed by the fact that most players played more than 10x times, totalling to over 15,800 games started. Taking into account the 29 second average game time, fans spent over 127 hours having a great time with this brand. And this is counting only the time spent playing the game, not time spent in the whole campaign.
“People were hooked!”
EFA also leveraged the ability to change the content of the live campaign – as a side quest, a banner to advertise an upcoming match was added to the campaign End screen. It rocked a CTA button to buy the tickets and 2% of players followed the link. Although the promotion and raffle is long over, the campaign is still up and running with a CTA to buy the T-shirt, extending the value created. And every day, a month after stopping all ads, 20 to 80 games are started by the fans who know the link.
Gathering leads was never the goal, therefore the form appeared after the game and filling the email field was not required. It resulted in slightly over 10% of unique players leaving their details, but on the other hand potentially in more engagement due to less restrictions. It highlights the staggering difference between Registration form placements – when asking mandatory contact details before the Game screen, the Unique Leads count averages around 70% of total Unique Visitors with the same game type.
According to Rauno, the one-man-marketing-team behind this campaign, found it “A bit tricky in the start” and added “but creating engaging content can be addictive.” We can see the gamified marketing feel-good chemicals kicking in as he’s already constructing new campaigns, this time including the partners of the Estonian Football Association. Looking forward to seeing what he will come up with next!
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