Title	RAISE IT
Brand	POKERSTARS
Product/Service	POKERSTARS BRAND
Category	A06. Financial Products & Services, Commercial Public Services, Business Products & Services
Entrant	GRAVITY ROAD London, UNITED KINGDOM
Idea Creation	GRAVITY ROAD London, UNITED KINGDOM
Production	GRAVITY ROAD London, UNITED KINGDOM

Name	Company	Position
Mark Boyd	Gravity Road	Executive Creative Director
Mark Eaves	Gravity Road	Executive Creative Director

The Campaign

Our audience demand a more candid representation of their Heroes, one that exists spontaneously and continuously in social feeds, untainted and unmediated by traditional media. So we designed a content-led campaign built around a series of videos tagged & posted on the talents’ feeds that gameify everyday life into extraordinary feats. We prioritized authenticity over everything in the production approach, shooting in vertical video and using iPhones on the shoot alongside high end equipment. So, when audiences watch Neymar do keepy-ups in a garden, then knock a drone out of the sky with the same football, you know this is real, not a thin advertising conceit.

Creative Execution

Rather than one film, we produced a whole series to play out over two months, capturing everyday moments where Ronaldo and Neymar could pull everyday “smarts” and post them at each other, encouraging the other to #raiseit back and building not only the level of performance but the social interaction. The campaign was carefully positioned to not feel too orchestrated, and launched with a PR approach to capture editorial coverage before media spend was deployed, and a global network of influencers were mobilized to create their own #RaiseIt feats off the back of the duel.

The campaign to date has smashed original targets, achieving: • Over 36 million views • Nearly 2.5 million engagements • Widespread media coverage including ESPN, CNN, Mail Online, Daily Mail and FOX to name a few The videos performed extremely well on Neymar and Ronaldo's Facebook, being their most engaging content to date. The biggest result was that Pokerstars briefed us to Raise-It by hitting a 50 million viewed campaign by the end of the year. Coming to your social feeds soon.

Our research showed that millennials are less predisposed to gambling than their parents – a trait typical of a post-financial crash mind-set. When they do gamble, these audiences want to feel engaged and empowered: that they exert some control over outcomes. We needed to reposition the category and build the mainstream image of Poker as a competitive, skill-based, entertaining 'mind sport': shift perceptions of poker to being a sport for in-control achievers (vs reckless carefree mavericks). We defined this new persona as somebody with what we called ‘smarts’ – a figure with the ability to turn the mundane and ordinary into the extraordinary. They are individualistic, questioning, unconventional, playful. They are Mind-Gamers. Out-witters. Independent thinkers. These are people that don’t just accept fate. They think laterally. They are Maverick Minds: in-control winners NOT reckless high-rollers.