Immortalizing the Apex Legends into Local Legends

CHALLENGE

For the launch of Apex Legends Season 8 – EA’s first-person battle royale shooter game, Electronic Arts wanted to double their number of players in Japan. First person shooter games are a niche market within the country and EA set out to challenge audiences who were loyal to pre established brands and recruited m/SIX’s audience segment and granularity, to help.

WHAT WE DID

We knew that 82% of our target audience were fans of manga and anime; widely popular and loved Japanese comics and animation and we decided to leverage this by elevating the character stories of Apex Legends.

We partnered with celebrated veteran mange/anime artist; Atsushi Ohkubo who brought the stories behind the Apex Legends characters to life. We then worked with IGN Japan to amplify Ohkubo’s artwork; the stories of the Apex Legends, across popular gaming websites in Japan. We also brought this outdoors with OOH placements of Ohkubo’s artwork placed within the iconic and heavily frequented Shibuya station.

We brought the stories of the Apex Legends to life, leading them to be loved as local legends.

Another crucial part of the campaign was running a UGC competition to engage the local audience and local gamers-come-artists. Five emerging illustrators helped launch the competition by reimagining the Apex universe using their own individual art styles, to inspire the gaming community.

RESULTS

The competition, alongside Ohkubo’s artistic reimagining's drove significant engagement leading to Apex Legends to trend on Twitter on the day of launch.

We measured 99k+ social engagements, 150+ fan artworks, resulting in 194% more players in Japan with an increase of 53% of daily active users.

By partnering with an established artist and inspiring gamers to unleash their creativity, we successfully attracted new audiences but also embedded Apex Legends into the market and the minds of our target audience. We went Further, Faster.