"It was a no-brainer. The audience was already there, and it was just a matter of leveraging that audience. Banner ads are fine, however our strategy around Wikia was to establish a platform for users to engage with content and other users, nurturing organic community growth."
                                                                           - Richard Oh–Digital Media Supervisor, Fearless Media

Results

The campaign began in August and ran through the end of the year. Before the year's end, it had already proven to be one of Wikia's most successful gaming campaigns to date.

Sweepstakes

• 30,000 entries

Trivia

• In five weeks, over 6,300 fans had played the Elder Scrolls Trivia game.

Ranking Widget

• In four weeks, fans had ranked over 1,300 games and interacted with the widget 50,000 times.

One of the most exciting responses came from the core group of fans. The "History of the Elder Scrolls" blog post Wikia elicited from the game developers was a huge hit, with more than 300 comments from fans expressing their enthusiasm for Bethesda's involvement.

Here are two of those fan quotes:

"The developers of the game we worship!"

"A blog post created by Bethesda Softworks? Excuse me, while I must go down to the cellar and open the finest bottle of wine I have got."

An equally surprising side benefit that boosted the results of the campaign was the incredible growth of the wiki in a short amount of time. A few days before the 11-11-11 release date, Wikia staff member JoePlay congratulated the community on reaching 7,000 pages. Just two weeks later, on November 22— two days before Black Friday—the site had grown by nearly 30% to 9,000 pages, and traffic skyrocketed. Suddenly, a campaign that reached 2.5 million people now was reaching 5 million.

"Wikia was not only a natural fit endemically, but was able to activate an audience hungry to engage with their passions. Beyond the standard brand presence, Wikia's intimate knowledge of the gaming vertical, as well as the ability to create custom executions, provides a compelling value for users."
                                                                    - Daniel Finnegan–Senior Media Planner at Fearless Media

"The program exceeded all of our expectations."
                                                                            - Richard Oh–Digital Media Supervisor, Fearless Media

Lessons Learned

• Use "fan type" categories: core, active, and casual. Sure, you may know the exact demographics of your target audience, but if you take it one step further, you'll be able to gain a deeper understanding of what to communicate, and how.
  
• Reward accordingly. For the different fan categories, think about what that customer would want as a reward. For the video sweepstakes, Wikia offered a prize reward for watching the trailer and interacting with the brand because that type of user required it. But for the series retrospective, fans were already vested, so the brand itself became the reward. Those fans value the brand so much that the exclusive content from the game developers was more than enough.
  
• Build from existing enthusiasm. For sequel releases, enough brand equity usually exists to both attract new customers and deepen the commitment of your hardcore fans. Provide the right content and experiences, and you'll increase that level of enthusiasm even more.
  
• Invest in an active, growing audience. Game releases create a lot of buzz in editorial media, but they are soon eclipsed by tomorrow's news. Consider applying your budget to a living and thriving destination with visitors and contributors that won't burn out in a few days.