Konami, Enter the Game, Havas Sports & Entertainment Spain

Every year in the videogame world, a ferocious battle is fought for sales where PES (Pro Evolution Soccer or World Soccer) and FIFA compete for users. The best way to do this is to prove their latest version of the football-simulated game is more realistic than the others. For Konami’s launch of PES 2013 in Spain, the brand wanted to turn their 9 million PES players into brand ambassadors. And with a feature like Player ID, where even the tiniest detail of the top 50 players are mapped out, word of mouth was sure to get PES users fired up. These players dream of living out the game – to become their football idol. Konami gave them the chance to make their dream come true with “Enter the Game,” the first campaign to convert a videogame fan into the protagonist of their favorite game by becoming a player in it.

To recruit players, the brand turned to Twitter and the hashtag #enterthegame. The official Twitter accounts of Cristiano Ronaldo and Real Madrid helped Konami to reach more people. The microsite com received 80,000 visits with more than 1,800 real/virtual footballer players coming along to the 2,500 m2 Madrid-Arena venue where they had to demonstrate not only their skill playing on the console but also playing real football in 12 exciting challenges. Edu Morillo was chosen as the top player in the tournament. Journalists and bloggers wrote enthusiastically about Edu as the first person ever to enter a videogame. In Japan, the world’s top programmers captured Edu’s moves and turned him into an avatar. With that, another star of PES 2013 was born. The story of Edu’s trip generated 16,000 views on YouTube while more than 20,000,000 impacts and free PR worth a value of 495,000€ were generated for the launch of the game.