Adventi Kalendarium (Advent Calendar)
Read the story- Brand
- SPAR
- Year
- 2023
- Objective
- Engagement
- Industry
- Retail
- Mechanic
- Arcade & Action
- Platform
- Web
- Agency
- Playable
Objective
SPAR Hungary needed to grow downloads and registered users for its MYSPAR loyalty app, and its old promo mechanics — Facebook contests and on-receipt code draws — were only pulling in 1,000–2,000 players a campaign. Moving game production in-house on the Playable platform let SPAR cut the cost and lead time of the outsourced builds it had commissioned from agencies for over a decade, ship a new game roughly every month instead of one or two a year, and sell in-game placement to supplier brands as a retail-media product.
Solution
The player lands on a branded campaign page (jatek.spar.hu) and plays straight away — no login wall — through a one-screen arcade round that changes with the season or product tie-in: dropping items in an S-budget snowboarding game, slicing ingredients in the Fördős Zé game, or tapping targets across several supplier brands in the carnival edition. When the round ends, a short form asks for name and contact details to enter the prize draw, with prizes ranging from SPAR gift cards and cookbooks up to an iPhone, a PlayStation 5, AirPods or a ski weekend in Austria. From there the page pushes a MYSPAR app download and a link to try the next game in the series. In December the single round is swapped for a 24-day online advent calendar: one window opens each day with a quiz or mini-game inside, paying out either an instant gift or another draw entry, so the campaign pulls players back daily instead of once.
Results
The December advent calendar, the strongest performer of the run, drew 355,000+ game sessions, 240,000+ registrations, 6,900+ total hours played and 15,000 click-throughs to the MYSPAR app. The multi-brand carnival game logged 125,000+ sessions, 50,000+ registrations, 4,000+ hours played, a 2:49 average session, 17,000+ MYSPAR app clicks and 6,800+ click-throughs to supplier Elmex's site. The S-budget snowboarding game reached 80,000+ sessions and 25,000+ registrations, with one Facebook ad alone reaching 65,000 people, and the Fördős Zé slicing game brought in 53,000+ sessions, 14,000+ registrations and 8,000+ clicks through to further games. Overall, per-campaign participation rose from 1,000–2,000 players under the old receipt-code contests to as many as 120,000+ sessions under the new in-house games, now shipping monthly instead of once or twice a year.
- 1
The S-budget snowboard game opens with an invitation to grab a board for a chance at ten HUF 10,000 SPAR gift cards. The player steers a snowboarder left and right down a slope, catching falling S-budget products and forint coins for points while dodging pine trees that end or penalize the run.
- 2
After the run, the player fills in a short registration form to enter the prize draw, and the end screen offers to open the MYSPAR app or jump straight into another SPAR game.
- 3
In the Fördős Zé 'Slice It' game, ingredients from chef Fördős Zé's cookbook fly across the screen and the player swipes to slice them, taking care to spare the cookbook itself when it appears among the flying objects.
- 4
Finishing the round leads to registration for the same gift-card draw, plus a 'try more games' button that funnels players to the other SPAR titles.
- 5
The multi-brand Carnival game presents a scene of products from Elmex, La Lorraine and Zott, and the player taps only the items dressed in carnival costumes while leaving the plain, non-costumed versions untouched.
- 6
The round ends with registration for a prize draw of an iPhone 15, three PlayStation 5 consoles and ten AirPods, plus an optional click-through to the featured partner brand's own site.
- 7
The Advent calendar presents a Christmas scene of 24 numbered windows, of which only the current day's window can be opened; tapping it reveals that day's task, either a quiz question or a short mini-game.
- 8
Completing the task and registering nets an on-the-spot reward on 13 of the days — SuperShop loyalty points, a recipe, or a downloadable wallpaper — while the other 11 days enter the player into a draw for SPAR gift cards or copies of Fördős Zé's cookbook.
- 9
Across the full month every entry also counts toward a grand-prize draw for a ski weekend in Kreischberg, Austria, and the calendar repeatedly pushes players to the MYSPAR app as they return each day to open the next window.
