Case Study: How NESCAFÉ tapped into the Minecraft craze to woo Gen Z gamers

To promote its new café-style cold coffee range and connect with Gen Z, NESCAFÉ partnered with popular Minecraft streamers during the buzz around the game’s movie release. The brand used in-stream integrations like branded fridges and creative overlays with QR codes that linked to Blinkit, allowing viewers to order directly. The idea was to build awareness in a relevant space without disrupting the viewing experience, while also encouraging quick purchase.

Here's a detailed case study on what went down. 

Category Introduction

The ready-to-drink cold coffee industry in India is currently estimated to be worth 172 crores and growing rapidly at 10% in 2024. This makes it one of the fastest-growing segments within cold beverages. The boom in India is being driven by an expanding café culture, a growing preference for convenient, indulgent beverages, and the evolution of coffee habits accelerated by international coffee chains. 

Gen Z is leading this demand, and brands must find ways to connect with this digital native audience in novel and relevant spaces. Gaming is one such space, with 74% of Gen Z India spending 6 hours a week playing. 

Brand Introduction

NESCAFÉ has recently expanded their ready-to-drink cold coffee range in India, offering five café-style flavours – Iced Latté, Iced Frappé, Classic Latté, Choco Latté, and Caramel Latté. This aims to meet the needs of young consumers who crave indulgent cold coffees on the go that can fit their fast-paced and dynamic lifestyles. The new range offers the perfect balance of taste, variety, and convenience all in one package. 

The brand’s goal for the campaign was to drive awareness and position NESCAFÉ as the ultimate chill companion, especially during high-stress moments like competitive gameplay.

Summary

India’s gaming ecosystem is rapidly evolving, with Minecraft emerging as a cultural phenomenon among Gen Z audiences. With some of the country’s largest gaming streamers tapping into the Minecraft mania, the game has built an active and loyal Gen Z fanbase.

To speak to an audience already overloaded with advertising, NESCAFÉ aimed to create awareness for its new café style cold coffee range in a contextual, non-intrusive manner. Excitement around Minecraft reached fever pitch with the release of the highly anticipated Minecraft movie on April 4. NESCAFÉ seized this opportunity and launched its new campaign – the NESCAFÉ OG Squad. The squad, featuring GamerFleet, UnGraduate Gamer, Ayush More, and many more top gaming creators, assembled from the 4th of April, to indulge in NESCAFÉ’s new café-style cold coffees. 

Branded refrigerators appeared on screens behind the creators, allowing them to grab their favourite NESCAFÉ variant in between gameplay. Overlaying the gameplay were cleverly crafted creatives that seamlessly tied into each mini-game without interrupting the viewing experience. Each overlay creative urged viewers to “Join the NESCAFÉ OG Squad” by purchasing cans through a QR code leading to Blinkit. Viewers celebrated, sharing screengrabs on social, tagging their favourite streamers and sharing their rave reviews of the new range. 

With this activation, the brand championed chill and indulgence with the Minecraft gaming community in an innovative, seamless way.

The campaign scaled throughout April, involving collaborations with 60 top streamers, including vernacular creators, thus positioning NESCAFÉ’s new café-style cold coffee as the ultimate chill partner for high-pressure gaming moments. 

Objective 

• Enhancing brand awareness for NESCAFÉ’s new café-style cold coffees
• Build associations in broader cold beverage consumption occasions
• Break clutter with Gen Z using organic and contextual storytelling 

Brief

• Generate awareness amongst India’s Minecraft streaming community with non-intrusive advertising that seamlessly integrates into the stream
• Build custom creatives that frame the brand within the context of the on-screen action
• Design an activation calendar that leverages the increased interest in Minecraft, driven by the pre and post-movie release hype.
• Create a full-funnel activation – moving consumers from awareness to conversion in the same campaign

Creative Idea

The campaign identified YouTube Live game streaming as the perfect medium to communicate about NESCAFÉ’s new café-style cold coffee range. To bring their vision to life, the brand partnered with StreamO – a creative ad-tech gaming platform that connects brands to a network of 20,000+ gaming creators. 

Recognising the unique streaming style of individual gaming creators, the brand co-created special event streams that blended seamlessly into each creator’s natural flow, allowing fans to experience their favourite streamers with an indulgent NESCAFÉ twist. To broaden its appeal, the campaign also engaged casual Minecraft streamers by featuring three of the game’s most popular mini-games: Build Battle, Bed Wars, and Hide & Seek. These game choices added excitement and made the streams more immersive. The streams included collaborations among top creators, encouraging humorous banter and making their interactions an enjoyable bonus for audiences. 

To bring NESCAFÉ into the spotlight, branded refrigerators were sent to each creator. During high-pressure moments, streamers could grab a can to literally ‘chill’. As the game progressed, creative overlays appeared through StreamO’s unique technology, customised to match the game being played, integrating the brand without disruptions.

The creatives encouraged consumers to “Join the NESCAFÉ OG Squad” by scanning the QR code and ordering their own cans on Blinkit. Hence, seamlessly moving the audience from awareness to conversion. 

And the best part? All of this was planned to coincide directly with the launch of the Minecraft movie - seamlessly piggybacking on the increased interest levels for Minecraft amongst India’s Gen Z.

Challenges

• Tech Integration: Finding the right partner/technology service to deploy custom overlay creatives in YouTube gaming live streams. 
• Creator Curation: Identifying the right creator partners and combinations, which would drive the most organic viewership and generate engaging content. 
• Viewer Engagement: Generating two-way participation, engaging not only creators but also viewers to enjoy the “chill experience” by scanning QR codes.
• Creative Contextualisation: Designing customised, contextual creatives to position NESCAFÉ’s indulgent cold coffees as the ultimate chill partner for moments of high tension.
• Scaling Timelines: Executing at scale to capture all of the post-movie launch buzz around Minecraft. 

Execution 

Pre-Campaign Buzz

1. The hype began building on April 3rd, as top influencers like GamerFleet started posting teaser Instagram Reels and YouTube community updates, asking fans to tune in for special streams the following day. Each teaser subtly hinted at a variant of NESCAFÉ Cold Coffee and invited the viewers to chill with them. 

2. On April 4, live streams and VOD content kicked off across YouTube, assembling the NESCAFÉ OG Squad.  Top streamers were seen sipping NESCAFÉ café-style cold coffees as the action of their mini games heated up, bringing the brand right into high pressure gaming moments without any disruptions. 

Campaign Execution

1. After the streams, top influencers shared post-event reels and stories, boosting the discoverability of their streams and bringing in new viewers to the campaign who could not view the live stream.

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A post shared by Anshu Bisht (@gamerfleetog)

2. As the campaign extended beyond the movie launch, a total of 60 gamers participated in the campaign throughout April, including 19 gamers with over 1 million subscribers.

3. Fans joined in organically, sharing screenshots, tagging their favourite creators, and raving about NESCAFÉ’s cold coffee, turning passive viewers into active brand participants.

Post Campaign Buzz

Within 10 days of the campaign’s launch, major publications including Financial Express, Exchange4Media, and Indian Television began to feature NESCAFÉ’s integration with game streaming, highlighting the uniqueness and the relevance of the campaign to the brand’s objectives.

Results 

Quantitative

1. The campaign generated 20.7 million views at an overall level, generating buzz across multiple channels. 

2. An impressive 13.4% CTR rate on streams by the top 5 gaming creators that the brand partnered with near the launch of the movie. The extension campaign with micro-influencers also yielded a 0.89% CTR, well above benchmarks for digital advertising.

Qualitative

1. Strengthened the brand’s positioning as a “chill partner” by acting as a break between high-pressure gameplay moments. 

2. Built cultural relevance through contextual integration. 

3. Gained strong visibility through seamless immersion in a high-engagement environment. 

4. Created authentic influence via trusted gaming creators with a high fan following.

5. Broadened brand reach through partnerships with vernacular gaming communities.

6. Drove action-oriented engagement beyond impressions by linking gameplay to quick commerce.

Talking about the campaign, Manav Sahni, Head, Dairy Business, Nestlé India, said, “Young India is gravitating towards gaming, and we wanted to leverage this content stream and position NESCAFÉ’s new café style cold coffee range as the ideal partner for gaming. With this insight, we tried to build on the buzz in the Minecraft gaming community coinciding with the launch of the movie. We collaborated with some of the top game streamers through live streaming activations, with the aim of enhancing brand awareness and deepening our engagement with the youth.”