When a content creator hit a slump, she found her creative spark from The Sims
April 25, 2024 | By Justin Kirkland, copywriter
What if there were a way to create inspiration … out of a blank canvas?
Not talking about the tangible finished product, or even a brainstorm. We’re talking about the moment when you realize that you’re really onto something. The little detail that makes you see, let’s say, a canvas or an empty room or a blank page in a new way. It’s the moment you find your “spark,” if you will.
That is exactly what The Sims and Amazon Ads Brand Innovation Lab set out to do when developing the Not Creative docuseries, which follows the story of Amanda Maryanna, an up-and-coming content creator and filmmaker who needed an extra boost of inspiration when it came to exploring her own imagination. With the help of three established creatives who found their own spark through The Sims, the three-part series explains how The Sims is still inspiring and shifting culture almost 25 years after its release.
For anyone who has ever dabbled on The Sims for an hour or two (or five), they know that the legacy video game gives players a carte blanche approach to creating their own world. With the click of a mouse, players control the people, places, and goings-on of whichever world they create. And while The Sims has remained a wildly popular video game for the past quarter-century, the team wanted to find a way to communicate its applicability in the lives of forthcoming generations. Of course, while world-building is at the core of the game, The Sims has evolved as a creative’s tool to inspiration.
Working with Brand Innovation Lab, the team behind The Sims wanted to look at how they could take the naturally creative aspect of the game and apply it to a campaign. Specifically, they wanted to know what a campaign would look like that highlighted the game, and successful creators have leveraged its creative potential to discover the spark that pushed them forward in their own careers. Within the docuseries, each creator works with Amanda, who explains that she’s fallen into a creative slump that’s kept her in her own comfort zone. Each creator takes an episode to show how they’ve used the versatility of The Sims to inform their creative endeavors in interior design, graphic art, and world-building. Each episode features a creator working through their own process and giving Amanda a “creative challenge” to push her own limits.
Brand Innovation Lab specializes in the types of campaigns that allow brands to hone in on what best defines their brand. Much like The Sims itself, the pieces were already there—it was about the magic that happens when bringing those pieces together. What Brand Innovation Lab and The Sims developed was a campaign that focuses on Amanda’s need for a bit of a boost in her creative life.
Joining her are three creators by the names of Francesca Grace, Cale Tyson, and Brielle Jenkins who work as an interior designer, musician, and graphic artist, respectively. Under the mentorship of these three Sims players, Amanda becomes the main character of her own creative search, speaking to each creator, hearing how they have found inspiration within The Sims, and teaching Amanda how she can use The Sims to dive into a place of discovery and innovating.
"Not Creative stems from cherished memories of playing The Sims with my cousin, highlighting a deep truth: It’s not just a game but a gateway to discovering passions,” says Roxy Dalton, a senior art director at Amazon Ads. “My cousin’s transition from studying law to thriving in an interior design career, sparked by a passion ignited through playing The Sims, demonstrates this. It’s more than entertainment; it’s a catalyst for creativity and self-discovery. Our campaign underscores how The Sims fosters imagination, offering boundless avenues for personal and professional growth."
Amazon Ads worked with The SIMs to help a young content creator find her "spark."
Amanda’s situation helps demonstrate how versatile The Sims can be for both veteran players and newbies who may not be as accustomed to the game. Focusing on Amanda’s creative journey, The Sims hoped to create buzz around the video game title itself, while also creating an opportunity to connect a top-of-funnel campaign to a shoppable moment on the Brand Store for viewers of the docuseries inspired by Amanda’s creative block. After creating the series, Brand Innovation Lab and The Sims worked together at the end of 2023 to develop buzz around the campaign.
Ahead of the release of the episodes on Fire TV and the Brand Store, the brand released teasers, Alexa-enabled audio ads, and a countdown clock on the Sims Brand Store on Amazon. Driving to the Brand Store helped create that shoppable moment that put customers just a click or two away from purchasing the video game title. But most importantly, the first phase of the campaign allowed for The Sims to engage with its fan base, while also introducing new players to the gist of the game.
In the second phase, the series launched with three episodes, each approximately four minutes each. Leaning fully into the aesthetic of The Sims (the beloved, incomprehensible Sims language, included), the campaign comes to life via a fully custom landing page that allows customers to get to know Amanda, Francesca, Cale, and Brielle a bit more intimately. While learning more about the creators and how they use the game to fuel their creative processes, customers can also shop their favorite game packs by clicking on the anchor link under each of the profiles.
Beyond the custom landing page, the campaign leaned into a fully omnichannel approach, with a custom hub available via Fire TV and an owned Fire TV channel, which holds all episodes. In addition to the Fire TV component, the campaign also included Streaming TV ads, retail placements, audio ads, and social posts driving back to the landing page. And to help inspire and meet players where they are, the campaign also included episodic watch parties on Twitch.
The results following the campaign indicate that Not Creative resonated with viewers across the board. With 409 million ad impressions and a global unique reach of over 72 million customers, the two-month campaign flight put The Sims in front of a massive audience. In a brand lift study, there was a 24-point increase in brand awareness in the U.S. and a 30-point increase in the U.K. In the U.S., 71% of surveyed viewers offered a positive sentiment, with a specific appreciation of how The Sims can be used to inspire creativity and how the game has real-life applications.
The campaign, much like the game itself, speaks to a wide spectrum of creators, of all ages—people who have sat in front of a computer and uncovered a piece of themselves in the process of creating a world separate from the one we live in every day. And yet, with every spark of inspiration, the boundary between those worlds gets a bit blurrier. As the powers behind The Sims know, the potential behind the long-running game has always been there. Sometimes, the players just need a bit of reminding that a fountain of innovation is just a click away.
To learn more about creative, custom advertising solutions, reach out to Amazon Ads to see what creative services are available for your brand.