Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) has launched the UK and World's first in-game recruitment advertising campaign. This is the latest innovation from TMP Worldwide, GCHQ's recruitment advertising partner, who led the strategy and partnered with Massive Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft Corp. and a global provider of dynamic in-game advertising. The campaign will promote career opportunities in the British Intelligence services via online in-game ads on selected games in the UK.

The one month campaign, beginning at the end of October, will provide GCHQ with a highly effective and relevant means of promoting exciting career opportunities to the online gaming audience, through real-world scenarios and realistic street and billboard advertising placements in selected PC and console games in the Massive Network.

Creative ad scenarios within games have already been used to promote global brands, including Coca Cola and Nokia, with powerful effect. Whilst independent research has shown that in game advertising can increase brand familiarity by up to 64%, whilst purchase consideration and ad recall can increase by up to 41%[1].



"Although press advertising still plays an important role, it's now just one element of an integrated approach to recruitment that forward thinking clients like GCHQ are spearheading," says Laura Robertson, GCHQ's Account Director at TMP Worldwide.

"The world of online gaming offers GCHQ a further route to target a captive audience," explains Kate Clemens, Head of GCHQ's Digital Strategy at TMP Worldwide. "These gamers are loyal and frequent users of PC and console games and are particularly receptive to innovative forms of advertising."



Tom Hosking, Regional Sales Director, EMEA, Massive Inc. says, "Video games continue to evolve as a mainstream entertainment medium, presenting new opportunities for advertisers to connect with a highly engaged, lean forward audience. We're delighted to help GCHQ take advantage of the dynamic, creative opportunities we offer through our Massive network, which are specifically designed to reach online gamers with ads that reflect their real world experiences."

Working closely with both TMP Worldwide and Massive, GCHQ has selected a number of key titles in which the ads will appear, including: Need for Speed Carbon, published by Electronic Arts; Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Double Agent and Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas, both published by Ubisoft; together with a brand new game, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, published by Activision.