More than three billion people play video games. The smartest brands do not interrupt them with advertising. They make commerce part of the game. Products become hidden rewards, weapons demonstrate benefits, glitches unlock offers and scoreboards deliver discounts. Here are eight tactics from the Discount Engine that turn the mechanics of play into the mechanics of purchase.
- Hunt The Object
- Hunt The Target
- Find The Glitch
- The Branded Game Asset
- The Game World As Map
- The Game Mechanic As Product Demo
- Hijack The Game's Infrastructure
- The In-Game Assassination Service
1. Hunt The Object
The product or its equivalent already exists inside the game as a findable, claimable object — hunt it down and earn the real thing.
Call of Discounts — Mercado Libre, GUT São Paulo, 2025, Brazil
Mercado Libre noticed that Prop Hunt — a hide-and-seek mode in Call of Duty where half the players disguise themselves as everyday objects — was already full of items that existed as real listings on its marketplace. GUT São Paulo mapped 420 props across 16 game maps to their real-life equivalents and rewarded players who hunted them down with discounts on those exact items. The prop being hunted and the product being discounted were the same object. Neymar Jr. played as several matched products — a children's toy, a golf bag — and players who eliminated him received steep discounts. Sixteen thousand discounts redeemed within 45 minutes. $1.3 million in sales. The most watched livestream on Twitch Brazil that year. See campaign ->
2. Hunt The Target
A human target inside the game carries the reward — the harder the target, the bigger the deal.
Killer Discounts — KFC, MRM/McCann Bucharest, 2020, Romania
KFC wanted to reach Romania's gaming audience authentically and to do so recruited the five best Fortnite streamers in the country and renamed them in-game as discount percentages — 60%, 70%, 80%, 90% and 100% — calibrated to their skill level. Players who eliminated them claimed that percentage off at any KFC restaurant. The harder the streamer, the more valuable the reward. All five played simultaneously, live-streamed from five perspectives — the first multi-stream live event of its kind in Romania. The campaign became #7 in YouTube's top gaming videos. See campaign ->
3. Find The Glitch
The reward is hidden inside a deliberate flaw or anomaly in the brand's own digital media — discover it to claim it.
Burger Glitch — Burger King, David, 2022, Brazil
Burger King needed to reach Brazil's gaming audience without resorting to category clichés. The insight was already in the culture: glitches had become entertainment in their own right, with react videos racking up millions of views on YouTube and TikTok. BK borrowed the behaviour. For a month, Burger King became Burger Glitch — deliberate glitches planted across the app, in-store menus, OOH advertising, and a metaverse BK store. Anyone who spotted one was rewarded with a coupon. Glitched burgers were delivered to streamers with unknown contents. A launch film drove people to the app to hunt first. Download record during the campaign. 60,000 sales in glitched coupons. 144 million impressions in a country of 95 million gamers. 11% growth in consideration among young adults. See campaign ->
Game On (VW Polo, Ogilvy South Africa, 2022, South Africa) needed to launch the Polo to an audience with a 40% ad-blocking rate. VW developed a collection of NFTs inspired by Johannesburg's streets, hid them inside its own advertising, and dropped daily clues on social. Fans who found an NFT within the ad and tweeted a screenshot with #GameOnVW could claim it. The people who most aggressively avoided advertising watched it frame by frame. The new Polo sold out. Most viewed, least skipped VW ad of 2022.
4. The Branded Game Asset
The brand builds a playable tool or weapon inside the game — the object has genuine gameplay utility, not just brand presence.
Mentos Fizzooka — Mentos, BBH London, 2025
The Mentos and cola reaction has been famous since 1999 — drop a Mentos into cola and the explosion is instant, spectacular, and irresistible. BBH London took that reaction and turned it into a weapon. The Mentos Fizzooka — a custom rocket launcher resembling a giant Mentos roll attached to a cola bottle — was dropped into some of Fortnite Creative's most popular maps, with a combined audience of over a million players per day. It was the first branded tactical item ever released in Fortnite Creative. The Fizzooka could blast opponents across the map and was the only Fortnite launcher designed to destroy player builds with a single shot — solving a genuine gameplay frustration for players tired of snipers hiding on top of tall structures. The product truth (Mentos + cola = explosive reaction) and the weapon's mechanic were identical. A real-life version over a metre long, built by The Hacksmith, fired a soda geyser with the force of a firehose. Thirty physical replicas were shipped to influencers globally. See campaign ->
#HavaianasFortniteDay (Havaianas, [agency TBC], [year TBC], Brazil) built a flip-flop shaped island inside Fortnite — the brand's most recognisable product became the game environment itself; players earned real-world discounts by playing on it.
