Excedrin: Game Over for Headaches
Gamers want to stay in the game. But headaches can take them out of it—and everything about gaming causes headaches, like stress, loud noises, and blue light.
Excedrin saw a chance to help with Game Over for Headaches, the only program specifically designed to help gamers avoid and treat head pain. To introduce it, we created The Excedrin Healing Academy, a bespoke team of video game characters known as “healers” that help keep other game characters safe. Each one was tied to a specific headache trigger, and featured a host of Excedrin-themed design cues.
We created a series of animated shorts explaining the connection between gaming and head pain:
Then, we showed gamers how they could avoid head pain entirely with the Excedrin Gamer Routine: a simple regimen, grounded in research, that minimizes the risk of headaches and actually improves performance.
To let gamers know about the Routine, we partnered with influential streamers on Twitch to talk about their own experiences with gaming-induced head pain. And an interactive component allowed viewers to use #Excedrin in the chat to unlock gift subscriptions.
We also enlisted top gamer Nadeshot (AKA Matthew Haag, founder & CEO of eSports team 100 Thieves) as our spokesperson. He spoke about his own headaches and did deskside chats with Dr. Elizabeth Seng, Excedrin’s resident head pain expert.
Finally, video-game-style loot boxes packed with healing resources were sent to influencers.
Results:
Silver EFFIE
Bronze Health CLIO (x2)
Twitter Shorty Awards (Winner—Single Platform: Twitch, Silver honoree, 2 Bronze honorees)
Creativity’s “Pick of the Day”
190 earned media placements
Half a billion earned media impressions
4.5 million new Twitch viewers
Over 19 million minutes of Excedrin content viewed on Twitch
Role: GCD
