In a highly competitive entertainment landscape, success for PlayStation’s new PS5 console depended on creating a global launch that both celebrated gaming and transcended into wider popular culture.  Our objective was to drive preference against gaming competitors (Xbox) and create cultural impact that would stand tall alongside the biggest global tech and movie launches.  We knew our approach would need to evolve from previous product launches as the entertainment and gaming landscape had transformed dramatically.

The gaming world had changed significantly since 2013, when PlayStation launched the successful PS4. The category had seen exponential growth, an explosion of new competitors and a fragmentation of audiences.

For context, in just three years Fortnite has grown to over 350m players, larger than the US population. In 2020, 100 billion hours of gaming content was watched on YouTube by more than 80,000 gaming content creators (each with 100k+ subscribers).

What has remained the same are the fundamental reasons why people play – gaming enables amazing experiences, facilitates connections, and drives conversations worldwide. It brings people together and thrills them – and that’s exactly what we set out to do for the launch of PlayStation 5.

For the PS5 launch, we realised the power of uniting all elements of today’s sprawling gaming community. Our overarching idea was to create social proof of PS5 and take advantage of this cognitive bias to ensure that for invested gamers and the mass audience, PlayStation was seen as the only choice of console.  Our starting point was to mobilise the loyal and engaged PlayStation fanbase to evangelise about the immersive technology of the console – a key differentiator for gamers. However, the largest driver of purchase intent, even for this expert audience, remained an emotional trust in the PlayStation brand.

For the more casual gamers, crucial to long-term success, brand trust was also hugely important. However, there was another dynamic at work. Their gaming choices were driven by the authoritative recommendations of their gamer friends.  Our approach was to generate cultural impact in two ways; creating pre-launch momentum and buzz among the core audience, then cultural relevance and impact that would excite the masses in a launch spectacular.  This would also fuel a vital driver of momentum and brand trust among gaming audiences to drive social proof – the vocal support and recommendation from the core gamer audience in turn engaging and exciting the wider audience opportunity.

Momentum was imperative – a fast start would enable us to maximise social proof. The brand that built the perception of dominance, the brand that was ‘seen’ to be winning, would be the brand more casual gamers chose.  The global social proof approach therefore focussed on two key elements, building gradually through a phased approach across the launch window:

First, in premium, contextual activity (named RESONANT) we embedded ourselves within the core gamer community, seeding emotive brand assets through activations, tactics, and partners. This activity would encourage core gamers to engage with and talk about PS5’s launch, with the ubiquity of their endorsement contributing to social proof. These activations were supported by a bedrock of traditional media to drive visibility of our product-focussed launch assets.

Secondly, for the mass launch activity (named ICONIC & UNEXPECTED), we created a global programme of creative, high impact, non-traditional activations that would elevate the campaign from a product launch to an unmissable global entertainment event. This strand of activity – targeting mass entertainment audiences, supported heavily through owned social channels – set out to emulate the leadership and stature of a trusted entertainment brand and fully realise the social proof effect.