Metacore: up-levelling mobile game creative for millennial women

The Challenge

Following the release of their Merge Mansion mobile game, Metacore was determined to maintain momentum through an awareness campaign aimed at millennial women players.

To create a meaningful connection with this often-overlooked demographic, their ad agency, Wieden + Kennedy, turned to  our insights to guide the development of the campaign.

The Approach

We crafted a customised, human-centred approach that challenged conventional casual gaming research, providing deeper and more actional insights. In contrast to most mobile games research, which is often quantitative and narrowly focused on gameplay and incremental optimisation, this custom qualitative study was designed to revolve around the player, illuminating their broader lifestyle and entertainment diet. We started with a moderated online board to better understand their day-to-day, media habits, genre preferences and mobile game motivations. Then, online triads uncovered the most compelling messaging for Merge Mansion.

The Impact

Our findings allowed Merge Mansion to break away from typical mobile gaming advertising, creating a campaign that resonated with the true motivations of female gamers. Featuring award-winning horror actress Kathy Bates, the “What is Grandma Hiding” campaign introduced an intriguing new layer of lore to the game, so captivating that fans even urged Metacore to turn it into a movie.

As a result, Metacore saw a 100% increase in both downloads and search volume, a 460% surge in social media mentions and 82M PR impressions fuelled by the excitement surrounding the campaign.