Xbox
Driving European Sales
Executive Summary
Reimagined the digital production of over 20,000 online ads delivered seasonally across Europe, promoting Xbox flagship titles including Halo, Gears of War, and Forza, with a budget exceeding £10M.
The Challenge
Xbox embarked on an ambitious digital marketing strategy across Europe to drive the growth of Xbox in an intensely competitive gaming market dominated.
Central to this initiative was the success of first-party games, requiring an extensive digital advertising campaign to engage diverse audiences across the region. Meeting these objectives necessitated the design, production, and delivery of over 20,000 ads, tailored to key markets, languages, and digital channels. Each campaign needed to resonate with local audiences while adhering to stringent platform-specific standards.
High-Volume Campaigns
Thousands of ads had to be produced and deployed across multiple digital channels, including display networks, social media, and streaming platforms, effectively promoting Xbox’s first-party games.
Multi-Territory Campaigns
Campaigns required cultural adaptation and localisation across Europe, ensuring relevance to regional audiences while maintaining consistent brand messaging and standards.
Diverse Publisher Requirements
Publishers maintained unique specifications for ad formats, sizes, behaviours, and compliance standards. Delivering high-volume campaigns required meticulous coordination to ensure compliance across diverse platforms and regions.
Engagement
As Xbox’s lead digital agency, AKQA was entrusted with conceptualising and delivering high-impact advertising campaigns across Europe. Leveraging its reputation for award-winning digital excellence, I was engaged by AKQA to lead the orchestration of a bespoke production process.
Discovery
To address the complexity of the challenge, I conducted a comprehensive review of the existing end-to-end production workflow, identifying bottlenecks and inefficiencies affecting publishers, Xbox, and AKQA. These insights informed the architecture and implementation of a purpose-built system designed to orchestrate high-volume, multi-territory online ad campaigns across Europe.
Orchestration
The purpose-built system centralised publisher specifications, optimised the tracking of forecasted versus actual production performance, and introduced real-time financial and operational dashboards. This approach not only ensured operational excellence but also empowered AKQA to focus on high-value strategic, creative, and revenue-generating initiatives, directly contributing to the sustained success of the Xbox in a highly competitive gaming market.
Responsibilities & Impact
The mandate was to streamline the creation and execution of Xbox’s complex, high-volume advertising campaigns, ensuring seamless delivery across diverse markets and platforms.
Delivered Multi-Territory Campaigns
Successfully launched multi-lingual digital campaigns for flagship Xbox titles, including Gears of War 3, Halo 4, Forza Horizon, Kinect Sports, and Dance Central. Delivered cohesive brand experiences tailored to diverse European markets, ensuring cultural and regional relevance.
Streamlined Online Ads Orchestration
Architected and deployed a bespoke production system to centralise specifications, publisher standards, and ad server requirements. This system enhanced operational efficiency and ensured consistent execution across all European markets.
Campaign Reporting & Tracking
Introduced real-time reporting systems that provided actionable insights into campaign progress. This innovation significantly improved transparency and accountability for stakeholders, enabling data-driven decisions.
Financial Estimation & Monitoring
Developed features for financial estimation and real-time budget tracking, ensuring campaigns remained financially aligned with Xbox’s objectives while maintaining cost efficiency.
Publisher Ready
Spearheaded robust technical and QA processes, ensuring campaigns adhered to stringent publisher standards on first submission, successfully meeting deadlines across Europe.
Production Leadership
Directed a 17-member cross-functional team, fostering seamless collaboration across design, localisation, and technical functions.
Enablers
Expertise
- Customer-Centric Innovation
- Interaction Design (IxD)
- Prototyping & Wireframing
- Data & Artificial Intelligence
- Data Analytics & Insights
- Data Modelling
- Finance
- Budget Planning & Management
- Cost Optimisation
- Financial Efficiency Analysis
- Profit & Loss (P&L) Management
- Operating Models & Value Orchestration
- Business Process Mapping & Optimisation
- Cross-Functional Collaboration
- Operational Performance & Reporting
- Quality Assurance
- Quality Assurance (QA)
- Technology & Infrastructure
- Technical Architecture & System Design
Technologies
- Data & Analytics
- Google Marketing Platform
- Design & User Experience
- Adobe Photoshop
- Digital Experience Platforms & CMS
- Adobe Flash
- Digital Marketing & Customer Engagement
- Google Marketing Platform
- Strategy & Business Planning
- Microsoft Excel
- Microsoft PowerPoint
- Microsoft Word
Results & Outcome
This engagement redefined Xbox’s digital advertising capabilities, producing of over 20,000 online ads delivered seasonally across Europe. Through a bespoke production system, AKQA seamlessly orchestrated consistent, high-impact, large-scale campaigns for first-party titles over several years.
This transformation played a pivotal role in driving awareness and engagement, solidifying the Xbox 360’s position as one of the most respected gaming consoles in the industry and setting a new benchmark for efficiency and excellence in digital marketing.