2025 Winner

CASE SUMMARY

Video games have evolved significantly since their inception. Today, games are able to transport communities to dynamic worlds with advanced on-screen
action and stimuli.

While this is an increasingly exciting time for gamers, it also means more is required from our bodies and brains to focus and play, giving rise to a new phenomenon: gaming headaches. 80% of gamers believe gaming headaches are unavoidable, and as a result, play through the pain.

This was an opportunity for Advil to demonstrate its leadership and expertise with this new kind of headache while building affinity within a specific community. To the 6 million gamers in Canada, gaming headaches can seem like an
unavoidable price to play.

The goal was to show players of all levels that gaming headaches can be prevented through proactive and simple solutions.

Gaming headaches are commonly caused by in-game factors like excessive brightness, motion sensitivity, audio levels, and more. Many of these in-game factors that cause headaches are factors that can be adjusted by gamers themselves – if they just know how.

The brand brought neuroscience and gaming together to tackle gaming headaches. They partnered with neuroscientist Dr. Séamas Weech to understand, through controlled gamer response data and neuroscience research, which unique settings combinations directly target visual stimulation that can lead to headaches, helping create a noticeable difference within the on-screen environment and
reduce headache triggers.

They also partnered with the gaming community like pro streamer Michael Tash to identify the right settings adjustments to codify “Advil Head Settings”. Seven genre-based head settings guides were developed: RPG, Action RPG, MOBA, First-person shooter, Third-person shooter, Racing, and Sports.

To launch, the agency developed a two-minute docu-style OLV that explained gaming headaches and shared the expert research process before introducing “Advil Head Settings”.

The OLV took on a nostalgic and playful tone, filled with several gaming references that would humor and engage audiences.

Based on top channels favoured by gamers, the full-length OLV was promoted on YouTube, with accompanying cutdowns shared across Advil Canada’s social channels, Twitch, Amazon, and Discord. The team also created a landing page, where gamers could download “Advil Head Settings” and access additional information on proactive tips to healthy gaming.

To increase awareness, engagement, and adoption across the gaming community, the brand partnered with gaming influencers on Twitch to promote different “Advil Head Settings”. While influencers demonstrated the “Advil Head Settings” guide and adjusted their own settings in real time.
This was also further promoted with an earned media strategy to connect with Canada’s tech and national media through an announcement release, interviews and opportunities to review “Advil Head Settings”.

Advil was able to engage the gaming community in a unique and authentic way that successfully drove awareness of gaming headaches our simple, proactive solution for every gaming session, no pill required. From high engagement on the Twitch takeover sessions and content with creators, this purpose-led campaign was a stepping stone to future conversations in the gaming space.

As a strategic and purpose-led campaign targeted at Canadian gamers, this campaign drove talkability across channels that gamers found relevant.

With over 110 stories and more than 5M impressions in earned media and interviews with the likes of Tech veteran Marc Saltzman’s show Tech Talk, the campaign saw features in key tech outlets like Mobile Syrup, Console Creatures, to marketing stories that highlighted the pioneering and unique efforts by a pain relief brand. In total, the campaign achieved over 66M total impressions.

This impact was further amplified with positive sentiment and engagement on Twitch, IG, YouTube and the campaign’s landing page which allowed gamers to understand, interact and learn more about “Advil Head Settings”.

The campaign saw an impressive 3.15% organic engagement rate that surpassed industry standards of 2% and over 14,000 clicks to the landing page website, generating over 5M social impressions across TikTok, Instagram and Twitch.

“Advil Head Settings” surpassed the campaign’s Twitch engagement benchmark by 400%. Through controlled surveys, they found 80% of gamers preferred “Advil Head Settings” to default settings, and awareness of Advil to fight gaming headaches increased by 51% after seeing the campaign.

This one-of-a-kind endeavor by Advil Canada to offer a proactive solution to reduce gaming headaches received a 100% positive sentiment and has paved the way to connecting with a growing gamer community in Canada.

Credits

Anthony Chelvanathan – Chief Creative Officer, Edelman Canada
Anna Nowak – Senior Vice President, Strategy, Edelman Canada
Shauna Roe – Creative Director, VP, Edelman Canada
Ioana Brain – Senior Designer, Edelman Canada
Natee Likitsuwankool - Creative Director, VP, Edelman Canada
Elma Karabegovic, Creative Director, Edelman Canada
Tamara Sulliman – Vice President, Head of Production & Creative Operations, Canada
Catherine Santos – Vice President, Integrated Brand, Edelman Canada
Shantelle Pereira – Senior Account Manager, Brand, Edelman Canada
James Lachno - Vice President, Edelman Canada Head of Social & Content, Digital
Peter McIntyre – Vice President, Digital, Edelman Canada
Evan Wong – Account Manager, Digital, Edelman Canada
Jessica Lee – Vice President, Influencer Marketing, Edelman Canada
Jennisha Shah - Senior Account Manager, Influencer Marketing, Edelman Canada
Gabriel-Lee Steed - Account Executive, Influencer Marketing, Edelman Canada
Greg Vanier – Head of Crisis and Risk, Canada
Margo Hicks – Program Manager, Canada

Agency Partner: Publicis