The archive · Marketing & Growth · Marketing decision · 2025
Mercado Livre turns Call of Duty's Prop Hunt into a live sale — Neymar hunted, $1.3M sold
Neymar hid as products inside Call of Duty's Prop Hunt; faster finds meant bigger discounts — 180K live viewers, $1.3M sales, a Cannes Grand Prix.
Mercado Livre
What it had to solve
Mercado Livre, Latin America's largest e-commerce platform, needed cultural relevance with Gen Z, who ignore traditional ads but live inside gaming and live streams. The brand wanted its catalog discovered through play rather than interruption.
How it works
In 2025, Mercado Livre — Latin America's biggest e-commerce platform — wanted to be where Gen Z actually spends its attention: inside games and live streams. GUT São Paulo answered with 'Call of Discounts', a live shopping event built inside Call of Duty's Prop Hunt mode, where players disguise themselves as everyday objects to hide from hunters.
Football star Neymar Jr. took the role of hider, disguised as products sold on Mercado Livre — a fridge, a toaster, a ball — while a squad of gaming influencers hunted him live on his Twitch stream. Each time he was found, a discount unlocked on the very item he embodied, with the size of the deal tied to how quickly he was caught. Across 16 game maps, 420 hidden objects were linked to real products in Mercado Livre's catalog, turning the match into a giant interactive storefront.
The stream peaked above 180,000 concurrent viewers, making it the year's most-watched live stream in the country, and viewers redeemed 16,000 coupons within 45 minutes, generating $1.3 million in sales. Awareness among 18–24-year-olds rose 5.4 percentage points. At Cannes Lions 2025 the campaign won the Entertainment Lions for Gaming Grand Prix — Brazil's first in the category — with the jury president calling it 'the whole package'.
Why it lands
- The discount was earned through play, so watching and buying felt like one activity, not two.
- Neymar embodied the merchandise itself — the product catalog became the entertainment, not a backdrop.
- Finding him fast unlocked bigger deals, creating live, real-time urgency during the stream.
- The mechanics ran on platforms Gen Z already uses — Twitch and Call of Duty — instead of interrupting them elsewhere.
- 420 real products across 16 maps tied the game world directly to the marketplace's inventory.
What it did
The stream drew more than 180,000 concurrent Twitch viewers — the most-watched live stream of the year — with 16,000 coupons redeemed in 45 minutes and $1.3 million in sales generated. Awareness rose 5.4 percentage points among 18–24-year-olds, and the work won the Entertainment Lions for Gaming Grand Prix at Cannes Lions 2025, Brazil's first in that Lion.
What you can take
Put the commerce inside the entertainment: when finding a hidden item unlocks a real discount, the audience plays the ad and buys in the same motion — engagement and conversion become one mechanic.
Since then
The campaign became a reference point for in-game commerce and was widely covered as a case study in gaming, retail and advertising press. Cannes Lions 2025 gave it the Entertainment Lions for Gaming Grand Prix, with jury president Sue Anderson describing it as an event that 'could only happen in that particular mode of Call of Duty' — a Super Bowl-like moment that gathered an entire audience around one thing. For Mercado Livre, it opened a territory the brand had never occupied: the gaming culture its youngest customers already live in.
Sources
- Cannes Lions announces winners across the Lions in the Entertainment and Craft Tracks
- Gut scores Gaming prize with Neymar
- Cette marque détourne Call of Duty pour un coup marketing et commercial de génie
- Mercado Livre — Call Of Discounts: Hunting Killer Deals in Call Of Duty
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