Mercado Livre’s Grand Prix for Gaming was awarded to Gut, São Paulo, for the campaign Call of Discounts.
The campaign transformed footballer Neymar Jr’s Twitch stream into an interactive shopping event using the Prop Hunt mode in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. In the game, Neymar disguised himself as Mercado Livre products, like fridges or speakers, and hid within the game environment. Viewers watched the live stream and joined in the hunt to find him. The quicker Neymar was found, the bigger the discount codes that appeared live on screen, tied to the exact product he was disguised as.
Jury president Sue Anderson, VP, creative of Roblox, observed a clear trend across the entries: brands doing their homework. The strongest work came from those that didn’t just attach themselves to gaming for relevance, but demonstrated real insight into the audience, the platforms and the creative potential of the medium.
Anderson described the Grand Prix winner as ‘the whole package’. ‘How do you get in and sell products inside of a game in a way that’s truly unique and just feels really fun? This work truly understood the space it was going into, capturing something very specific to the game itself that could only have been done in that particular mode of Call of Duty.’
She added that the campaign felt like an event moment – ‘almost like a Super Bowl’ – creating a window where the entire audience could come together, have a great time, and still engage with what the brand was ultimately trying to do: sell a full furniture range.
