Intel wanted to promote their Core 2 Extreme processor to hard-core gamers and encourage them to upgrade.

In competitive gaming, speed is everything and without the best kit, you harm your chances of winning. Our task was to showcase to gamers how the new Core 2 Extreme processor - with it's better speed & power - could aid their gameplay and make them stars in their teams.

We devised the 'C2E Tournament', bringing together key underground PC Gaming teams in a 3 month battle to find the best players. Designing & building a dedicated site as the campaign hub, we achieved traffic through Intel's coverage, promoting to hardcore gamers across the web, through underground gaming sites and to their communities. The campaign was driven by recruiting pro-gaming teams and managers who commentated on the matches and faced off against winning amateurs in a final, winner takes all match using the latest C2E processors (streamed live).

We generated over 10m viewed pages of coverage, 500,000 total visits to the tournament site and secured exposure to over 850,000 UK Gamers. Research showed that, by the end of the campaign, only 10% of those surveyed would wait for another product rather than the C2E processor.

Being active in the grass-roots of niche communities requires sensitivity and attention to detail - understanding the audience takes precedent over heavy marketing messages. When you get it right, the audience will share the campaign willingly.