HP OMEN's most successful campaign — 1.5M YouTube views in under a week.

The challenge

HP OMEN — HP's gaming brand — needed a campaign that would reach gamers in their natural habitat (YouTube, anime, gaming culture) without feeling like another ad. Standard advertising formats had hit diminishing returns. The category demanded something the platform didn't already have.

The work

I led integrated campaign activation for HP across the Media.Monks Fortune 50 client portfolio — and on OMEN, that meant getting deep into the gaming creator economy. The approach:

• Anime Influencer collaboration. Co-developed creative alongside named anime creators rather than in spite of them. Their voice, their worlds, their fan base — channeled into HP OMEN's brand frame instead of imposing a brand frame on them.
• Choose-your-adventure YouTube format. Built in collaboration with YouTube Creator support — an industry-first interactive ad format where viewers branched the narrative themselves. Sustained viewer attention in a category where 6-second pre-roll is the norm.
• Video-game-inspired worlds. Anime + game aesthetics blended with HP OMEN product moments. The product is in the world; the world is the story.

The outcome

The campaign drove 1.5 million YouTube views in under a week — making it HP OMEN's most successful campaign in the brand's history. The choose-your-adventure format outperformed standard pre-roll on every engagement metric tracked.

The wider point — gaming and anime audiences don't reward interruption advertising. They reward creators they trust making content they want to share. The campaign worked because it was built that way from frame one.