V Energy drink was experiencing declines in sales and relevance amongst younger drinkers. Research has found that while “The Massive Hit That Improves You a Bit” is an effective message for 18-24’s, it’s not reaching them. With large segments of the youth demographic moving their attention from TV to gaming platforms like Twitch, and the gaming industry becoming larger than Hollywood, we knew we had a new way of engaging with the 18 – 24 audience in a channel that massively over-indexes with the Australian youth that V needs to talk to. 

 

Instead of entering the over-crowded space of eSports sponsorships, we saw an opportunity to involve our brand with an active community, and to amplify our brand story through creating playable content for them. We looked for a game with a long-standing following, which was open to ‘modding so we could integrate V into the game, and found the perfect match in Fallout 4.

 

Gamers are always looking for fresh content long after a games release, and for new and better versions of their favourite game. To find out how we could provide a mod that benefitted and engaged the community, we started by covertly gathering insights from fan communities, asking them how they would ‘improve the game a bit’. The roughly 100 responses informed the content of our Wasteland with a V Mod – a file that edited the Fallout 4 game itself. First, we added V Energy Drinks to the game – when players drank it, all of their in-game attributes (strength, agility, etc.) would improve just a bit. The drinks could be found in branded Vending Machines labelled ‘Property of Shameless Product Placement Inc.’ scattered around Fallout 4’s post-apocalyptic wasteland setting. Then, we made the fan requests a reality in a very ’V’ way. For example, a Reddit user asked for a better rifle, so we created a new one and named it after him. Another asked us for new quests, so we created two hours of story content, complete with recorded dialogue. Along the way, V Energy was there, helping the player, continuing to spawn in the game-world indefinitely. 

 

Launching on gaming communities Nexus Mods and Creation Club, V received immediate love from the community for making their requests a reality. With the campaign being live for a period of three days, we achieved significant results including more than 10,000 downloads, a 5-star score from over 50 ratings, and the mod’s pages received more than 150,000 views before any media spend came in to effect. Then, we enlisted two top-tier Australian Twitch streamers to play Fallout 4 with the Wasteland with a V mod, broadcasting their session to a combined following of 600,000 highly engaged gamers. Thousands of Australians spent their Friday night and Sunday morning streaming four hours of V-branded content, effectively reconnecting us with our audience.